Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending May 30, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Salesforce, AMD, CloudZero, Zscaler and Argano.

The Week Ending May 30

This week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is packed with companies making strategic acquisition deals. Topping the list is Salesforce’s $8 billion deal to buy data management platform leader Informatica in a move to boost the cloud application vendor’s ability to supply data to AI and agentic AI systems.

Also making this week’s list is AMD for its acquisition of a silicon photonics technology startup, CloudZero for an impressive Series C funding round, cybersecurity company Zscaler for an acquisition in the fast-growing managed detection and response (MDR) space, and digital services consultant Argano for its acquisition of Anavate Partners, a fellow global consulting firm with a focus on cloud-based planning and forecasting.

Salesforce CEO Says $8B Informatica Buy Will Create ‘Most Complete’ AI Data Platform In The Industry

Salesforce tops this week’s Came to Win list with its deal to buy data management and data transformation tech developer Informatica for $8 billion. CEO Marc Benioff said that with the acquisition Salesforce will become the top AI data platform company in the world with a focus on agentic AI.

The acquisition aims to enhance Salesforce’s data foundation for deploying powerful and responsible agentic AI. The combination of Informatica’s data catalog, data integration, data governance and privacy, data quality, data transformation and metadata management services with the Salesforce platform will create a unified architecture for agentic AI, the company said.

“Together, Salesforce and Informatica will create the most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry,” Benioff said in a statement. “By uniting the power of Data Cloud, MuleSoft, and Tableau with Informatica’s industry-leading, advanced data management capabilities, we will enable autonomous agents to deliver smarter, safer, and more scalable outcomes for every company, and significantly strengthen our position in the $150 billion-plus enterprise data market.”

Collecting, preparing and managing data to feed data-hungry AI systems has been a major challenge for businesses and organizations trying to develop and deploy AI, generative AI and agentic AI applications.

Upon close of the acquisition, Salesforce plans to rapidly integrate Informatica’s technology stack — including data integration, data quality, data governance, and unified metadata for Agentforce, and a single data pipeline with Master Data Management (MDM) on the Salesforce Data Cloud.

AMD Acquires Silicon Photonics Startup Enosemi In AI Systems Push

Speaking of strategic acquisitions, AMD this week said it has acquired silicon photonics startup Enosemi to “support and develop a variety of photonics and co-packaged optics solutions across next-gen AI systems.”

Enosemi’s photonic integrated circuits will help AMD enable “faster, more efficient data movement” within server racks that is required by ever-growing AI models, AMD executive Brian Amick said in a blog post.

“Co-packaged optics can deliver higher bandwidth density and better power efficiency than traditional approaches, representing a transformative step in system architecture where tighter integration between compute and networking is enabled to support the performance and scale that advanced AI workloads require,” he wrote.

Founded in 2023, Enosemi’s “elite team of experts and PhD-level talent” has a “proven record of building and shipping photonic integrated circuits in volume, a unique feat that few select teams have accomplished,” Amick said in his blog post.

Amick said AMD has been building a “best-in-class portfolio” that is designed to “address the rapidly evolving needs of AI.” This portfolio includes “foundational silicon” such as the AI engines and adaptive system-on-chip technologies gained through its Xilinx acquisition as well as the advanced data movement and networking capabilities that came from its acquisition of Pensando. The portfolio also features AI software from its Silo AI and Mipsology acquisitions as well as the rack-level system design expertise of its ZT Systems acquisition.

CloudZero Raises $56 Million In Latest Funding Round

CloudZero, startup developer of an industry-leading cloud cost optimization platform, this week raised an impressive $56 million in a Series C funding round that included a “strategic investment” from development database provider MongoDB.

CloudZero said the funding round followed “another year of triple-digit growth” without disclosing actual financials.

The Boston-based company said it would use the additional financial resources to accelerate development of AI-driven cost analytics and forecasting, build deeper integrations across developer and finance workflows, and expand strategic partner and cloud alliances.

CloudZero, founded in 2016, provides a cloud FinOps system that automates the collection and analysis of cloud and AI spending data, providing businesses and organizations with visibility into their cloud and AI infrastructure spending and helping them quantify and maximize ROI.

Cloud spending is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2023 and AI workloads are reshaping IT infrastructure needs, the company said.

"AI is redefining what's possible — but without a deep understanding of cloud unit economics, innovation becomes unsustainable," said Phil Pergola, CEO of CloudZero, in a statement. "CloudZero is pioneering a new standard for cloud cost optimization, giving companies the precision they need to scale cloud and AI responsibly."

Zscaler To Acquire MDR Trailblazer Red Canary

Returning to the topic of savvy acquisitions, cybersecurity vendor Zscaler this week reached a deal to acquire Red Canary, a major player in managed detection and response (MDR), as Zscaler seeks to accelerate its threat mitigation offerings for customers and partners.

Founded in 2013, Red Canary is known as a trailblazer in MDR, which provides 24/7 threat monitoring and has seen massive adoption in recent years — as well as many new entrants on the vendor side. The Forrester Wave report has ranked Red Canary as a “leader” for the past three years, Zscaler noted in a news release.

Red Canary is also widely known in the cybersecurity industry for its threat intelligence reports and services.

The acquisition aims to boost Zscaler’s capabilities around threat detection and response as well as modernization of the Security Operations Center (SOC), the company said in its release.

The deal is a “natural expansion” of Zscaler’s existing offerings focused on enabling zero-trust security, with a goal to “accelerate our vision of AI-powered SOC of the future,” Zscaler Founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry said in the release.

Combining the two companies “will deliver to our customers the power of a fully integrated Zero Trust platform and AI-powered security operations,” Chaudhry said.

Digital Services Firm Argano Expands Planning, Forecast, Automation Services With Anavate Buy

IT vendors weren’t the only ones striking acquisition deals this week. Digital services consultant Argano acquired Anavate Partners, a fellow global consulting firm with a focus on cloud-based planning and forecasting.

The company said the acquisition would broaden Argano’s portfolio of planning, forecasting and automation services, specifically around the Anaplan financial, sales and supply chain planning platform.

The acquisition marks Plano, Texas-based Argano’s fourth acquisition since the start of the year, as well as its 20th acquisition since it was founded in 2020.