Software giant Salesforce said it has agreed to buy the software company formerly known as Intercom for about $3.6 billion (€3.1 billion), making it the biggest ever deal for an Irish-founded tech firm.
The company, which last month rebranded as Fin, has developed an artificial intelligence-driven customer agent that can answer questions and deal with increasingly complex queries.
The company employs about 1,300 people overall. While now headquartered in San Francisco it retains a large presence in Dublin and also has offices in London, Chicago, Sydney and Berlin.
Salesforce, which is listed on Wall Street’s S&P 500 index, said Fin is an “industry-leading customer agent company” that will complement the group’s existing AI agent offering.
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The deal is subject to certain price adjustment conditions, the US group said in a statement. It expects to close the deal before the end of January.
“This is a major win for consumers of the world,” said Eoghan McCabe, chief executive and co-founder of Fin.
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“Our technology has defined this category and set the new standards for what great customer service looks like today. By joining forces with Salesforce, we can deploy it far and wide at a rate far faster than we could have ever achieved on our own.”
The deal is likely to result in big payouts for McCabe along with Des Traynor who also cofounded the company and is Fin’s head of research and development. The other co-founders were Ciaran Lee and David Barrett. Neither are directors of the company today.
Intercom saw losses widen to $25.2 million even as revenue increased by $22 million to $283 million in 2025, according to its most recently filed accounts.
Like most tech start ups, Intercom has long used share options for staff bonuses and other payments beyond basic salary. That means many of the company’s employees will likely be in line for big payouts as a result of the deal.
Fin was founded as Intercom in 2011, capitalising on the software-as-a-service wave that helped create some huge companies.
McCabe led the company until 2020 before returning to the chief executive role in 2022. In recent years it has focused on using artificial intelligence for its Fin chatbot, which powers the likes of automated chats seen on numerous websites and through the likes of WhatsApp and email, among other platforms.
It has about 30,000 customers and makes more than $400 million in recurring revenue, according to its website.
In March, Intercom raised $250 million in debt financing to help develop its Fin agent. At that time, McCabe promised “major” new customer agent releases this year.
“These agents will be sellers and advisers, teachers and experts,” he said then. “They will achieve so much more than efficiency, they will allow what was heretofore impossible with humans: truly perfect customer experiences.”
Intercom has long been a darling of the Irish tech industry, and was one of the first Irish companies to become a so-called unicorn – the moniker given to startups valued at more than $1 billion.
The deal also comes less than four years after Intercom slashed its workforce by 13 per cent and reined in spending, including its plans to occupy a new office block on Earlsfort Terrace. When announcing the job cuts it said the company’s staff numbers had grown “too fast compared to revenue growth and where the market was headed.”
