Salesforce is acquiring Informatica, a leading enterprise data management and analytics company, for approximately $8 billion to enhance its data management capabilities and support its AI initiatives. The deal is part of Salesforce's strategy to strengthen its position in the enterprise data market, following a trend of significant acquisitions aimed at boosting growth and innovation. Informatica's tools will integrate with Salesforce's existing platforms to enable advanced data governance and management solutions.

The article discusses Salesforce's new Data Cloud, which integrates a massive lakehouse architecture featuring over 4 million tables and 50 petabytes of data. Powered by Apache Iceberg, this infrastructure aims to enhance data management and analytics capabilities for businesses.