In 2019, which company acquired Tableau Software for $15.7 billion?

In 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau Software for $15.7 billion.

Salesforce announced the all-stock transaction on June 10, 2019, and completed it later that year. The purchase brought Tableau’s data-visualization and business-intelligence tools into Salesforce’s cloud-software portfolio, adding analytics capabilities to a company best known for customer-relationship management and enterprise applications.

Tableau was founded in 2003 by Christian Chabot, Chris Stolte, and Pat Hanrahan. Its roots reached back to research at Stanford University on visual ways to explore relational databases and multidimensional data. Products such as Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server helped users turn complex data into interactive charts, dashboards, and maps without requiring every analyst to write database queries.

The deal was Salesforce’s largest acquisition at the time and was intended to help customers understand information across sales, service, marketing, and other operations. A frequent mix-up is with Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP, all of which operate competing analytics and enterprise-software products. Salesforce did not absorb Tableau as a mere feature: Tableau continued as a distinct brand and product organization within the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce’s later acquisition of Slack exceeded the Tableau deal in value.