Salesforce in talks to buy Listen Labs for around $2 billion

Salesforce's reported interest in Listen Labs comes as the software giant pushes to improve its AI efforts, particularly around enterprise agents. Listen Labs was founded in 2023 by Alfred Wahlforss and Florian Juengermann, who met as Harvard undergraduates while building an AI avatar app. They later used an early version of what became Listen Labs to interview users, leading them to see AI-driven market research as valuable. The company's software automates qualitative research, which has typically been expensive and time-consuming.

Listen Labs has gained traction, with customers including Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, Nestle, Sweetgreen, and Perplexity. At the beginning of the year, it said it grew annualized revenue by 15x and interviewed more than one million people in nine months. It was last valued at $500 million earlier this year, with backers including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Conviction Partners, and Pear VC.

For Salesforce, the deal would bolster its Agentforce platform by adding customer-understanding capabilities, potentially helping recommend products and craft sales pitches. The reported talks also fit a recent wave of AI acquisitions, with Nvidia acquiring HuggingFace for around $12.9 billion and Stripe buying OpenRouter for around $8 billion. Whether a deal materializes remains uncertain, as talks are not finalized and could be unsuccessful.