Salesforce acquires Fin for $3.6 billion

Salesforce said it is acquiring Fin, formerly known as Intercom, for $3.6 billion in a deal that brings customer service AI agents and a proprietary AI model called Apex to Agentforce.

At first glance, Fin's focus on AI agents and a platform aimed at resolving customer support looks a bit redundant. Fin also has offerings for service, sales and e-commerce as well as integrations with Freshdesk, Salesforce and HubSpot.

Many of Fin's capabilities overlap with what Salesforce's Agentforce does across multiple channels. In a statement, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said "Fin brings proven agent technology" that will complement Agentforce's service agents.

According to the companies, Salesforce and Fin will combine to give customers more ways to deploy AI agents across customer service. Salesforce noted that Fin will extend its reach into the SMB market.

Fin will be able to scale its business as part of Salesforce.

Salesforce, which recently acquired Contentful, said the deal will close in its fiscal fourth quarter.

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Key things to know about Fin:

• The company's Customer Agent is one agent that works across qualifying leads, closing sales and resolving support issues. The agent can also manage e-commerce and switch roles as needed.
• Fin's platform has roles, customer facing agents, agent operations, tools for governance and control, and purpose-built models.
• Fin’s flagship model is Apex 1.0.
• The big idea from Fin is to use one agent to work across an entire customer journey.

Here are a few screens of Fin's platform.