Slack got the giant’s attention a few years ago when Mr Butterfield promised to wipe out email, which would threaten Outlook, Microsoft’s popular inbox, and its email server, Exchange. Such sentiments explain why for Microsoft the Slack deal is a red rag. Perhaps, Mr Levie muses, “even the largest”. Aaron Levie, boss of Box, a cloud firm, describes Slack as “another dot on the graph” that plots Salesforce’s rise to become the world’s number-two business-software company (behind Microsoft). It already rules in customer-relationship software and thrives in other areas of business software, especially since acquiring Tableau. But it may at last have a shot at tech’s top table. His firm’s valuation is still well behind Microsoft’s $1.6trn. Mr Benioff is paying with a mix of cash and Salesforce stock. Slack, whose share price has lagged behind those of Zoom and other enablers of remote work, suddenly looked affordable. A boom in tech stocks lifted Salesforce’s market value from $144bn to $225bn this year.
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