Salesforce agrees to buy military AI firm Rune for $375 million
The price is about three times the $127 million value that PitchBook gave Rune last year.
Salesforce agreed to buy Rune Technologies for $375 million in cash and stock, Resilience Media said. Rune makes AI software for the US military. The software predicts the supplies that the military needs and helps manage logistics in the field. Salesforce will put Rune in Missionforce, its unit for defense work. The report does not give a date for the end of the deal.
How it works
Rune gives Missionforce data from the front line. Salesforce says this moves Missionforce from work in back offices to battlefield operations.
The numbers
Salesforce says the Missionforce business grew 80% in one year. It says a new 10 year, $5.6 billion contract with the US Army helped. Rune raised $30 million in total. PitchBook says it had a value of $127 million last year.
What is not known
The report is the only source of the price. The source gives no test results for the Rune software and no names of customers.
Insight: Salesforce pays a high price for field data
Salesforce agreed to pay about three times the last value of Rune, which raised $30 million. FourKites said its AI agents use data from more than 1,600 brands and 500,000 carriers. Data from the field reads as the part that is hard to get, and buyers pay a premium for it. If you sell AI agents, your data can have more value than your code.
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