Salesforce buys Informatica. Welcome to the American Zaibatsu.

Enterprise software is consolidating into full-stack empires. AI is the accelerant. Data is the weapon.

Salesforce just bought Informatica for $8 billion. And it’s not about data. It’s not about “agentic AI.” It’s not even really about AI.

This is about power.

This is the slow, inevitable formation of the American Zaibatsu, technology conglomerates that don’t just make software but own entire verticals through deep integration, acquisition, and distribution control.

Software is no longer enough

A few years ago, Salesforce was still trying to pitch itself as the number one CRM. Now, it calls itself the number one “AI CRM,” whatever that means. Everyone's putting AI lipstick on their old platforms. The problem is, AI doesn’t just need compute. It needs structured, contextual, governed data at enterprise scale. And Salesforce doesn’t have that. Nobody really does.

So Salesforce bought the stack. Again.

Data Cloud wasn't enough. MuleSoft wasn't enough. Tableau wasn't enough. They needed actual data management — metadata, MDM, lineage, governance. The plumbing. That’s Informatica’s game. Not sexy, but vital.

With this move, Salesforce is trying to become the system of record, the system of intelligence, and the system of execution. That’s not a platform anymore. That’s a state apparatus.

From products to empires

This isn’t just a tuck-in acquisition. This is about Salesforce building an operating system for the enterprise. One that doesn’t just store your customer data but decides how it’s processed, visualized, interpreted, and acted on. Autonomous agents? They’ll be plugged into this stack, top to bottom. Governance? Built-in. Identity? Tracked. Context? Provided.

This isn’t a feature play. This is a moat play. It’s vertical integration, Silicon Valley style.

The real story isn’t Salesforce buying Informatica. It’s what everyone else has to do next.

The American Zaibatsu thesis

Every tech company is converging on the same realization: there’s no future in being a one-trick pony. AI blew up the old GTM playbook, obliterated vertical SaaS, and devalued proprietary feature sets. You can’t win on product alone anymore.

Now, you need distribution. You need ecosystems. You need to own the whole pipe.

So companies are going full stack. Microsoft. Amazon. Oracle. Salesforce. They’re all building their own zaibatsus, complex, semi-autonomous, multi-vertical technology empires. AI is the excuse. Data is the lever. Control is the prize.

We’re not going back to small. The American tech giant is becoming what the Japanese industrial conglomerate was in the 20th century: a full spectrum player across infrastructure, services, data, and capital.

The Informatica deal is the canary

Salesforce knows its AI isn't enough. So it bought a company that’s been quietly organizing the data universe for two decades. Informatica is the kind of vendor most software engineers ignore but every CIO signs off on. Their entire business is being the boring part of the stack that makes the rest work.

In other words: infrastructure for trust.

You can’t run autonomous agents on garbage data. You can’t automate business processes with shadow IT. And you definitely can’t scale AI across the enterprise without knowing where your data came from and who touched it.

Salesforce is buying safety. Legitimacy. The right to operate AI at scale in regulated, risk averse, audit heavy environments. The only kind that actually makes money.

What this means for the market

This is the beginning of the end for the “pure” software startup. Nobody wants a point solution anymore. Not when the giants are bundling it all and embedding it directly into workflows. If your product doesn’t plug into someone’s zaibatsu, you’re already losing.

Expect more rollups. Expect more acquisitions. Expect every major platform company to start looking more like SAP in the 2000s, but faster and far more capable.

In this new model, value isn't created at the edge. It's orchestrated from the center. Control the core data layer, and you own the rest of the stack.

A warning to the bold

Snowflake, Databricks, and the rest of the rising data infrastructure players are inching toward the public markets, still structured like product companies. But the terrain has shifted beneath them.

They don’t have the luxury of a decade-long incubation like Alphabet did. Google had time to evolve into a conglomerate. These companies won't.

Salesforce is moving fast. So is Microsoft. So is Amazon. The giants are building full-stack ecosystems with ruthless vertical integration; not to win customers, but to make absorption impossible.

If you're not building defensibility across the full enterprise stack, from data layer to execution engine, you're not building a business. You're building an acquisition target.

This isn’t just about valuation multiples or IPO optics. It’s existential. Either structure yourself like an empire, or be ready to join one.

Parting thoughts

The old Salesforce was a product. The new Salesforce is a bureaucracy.

And that’s not a bad thing.

The market doesn’t reward elegance anymore. It rewards comprehensiveness. Vertical dominance. Full spectrum coverage. That’s what Salesforce is chasing, and they’re not alone.

The American Zaibatsu is here. It's not just a metaphor. It's a model. And if you're building software in 2025, you better pick a side.

Because this isn't a product war. It's an empire war.