Salesforce acquires Doti to advance enterprise search capabilities

Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Doti, an agentic enterprise search company, on November 13, 2025. The acquisition brings specialized talent to Salesforce's AI research and development hub in Israel while advancing unified search capabilities across the platform, according to the announcement.

The transaction, expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2026, marks another step in the company's consolidation of enterprise AI tools. Doti's team will focus on building an agentic search layer across Salesforce's infrastructure, with Slack serving as the conversational interface for data discovery and action execution.

"Doti's expertise fast-tracks our vision to reinvent enterprise search across Salesforce," said Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack, according to the announcement. The integration aims to transform how employees locate, comprehend, and act on information through AI-powered conversational contexts within Slack.

Doti developed a platform that enables knowledge workers to access information across organizational tools without manual searching through multiple systems. The company's technology integrates with platforms including Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, Zendesk, and Salesforce, transforming scattered data into actionable insights. Founded by CEO Matan Cohen and his team, Doti positioned itself as an alternative to traditional enterprise search by emphasizing intelligent agents rather than basic keyword matching.

The company's mission centered on making enterprise data "instantly accessible and actionable," according to Cohen. "Joining Salesforce and its AI R&D hub in Israel gives us the global scale and resources to realize this vision faster," Cohen stated in the announcement. The acquisition provides Doti access to Salesforce's customer base and infrastructure to accelerate deployment of its search technology.

Salesforce launched its Agentforce platform in September 2024, positioning AI agents as core to its enterprise strategy. CEO Marc Benioff set an ambitious goal of deploying "a billion agents" for customers within 12 months of that announcement. The Doti acquisition directly supports this strategy by enhancing Salesforce's search foundation for agentic workflows.

The enterprise search market faces growing complexity as organizations accumulate data across disconnected platforms. Doti claimed to update knowledge bases over 20 times daily, addressing the persistent problem of outdated information in traditional enterprise search systems. The company marketed faster onboarding compared to competitors, stating installation takes one hour with teams becoming operational in weeks rather than months.

Doti's technology addressed specific enterprise challenges including mean time to resolution for support teams. Customer testimonials cited 30 percent faster resolution times and 16 hours saved per employee monthly through reduced search time. The company claimed to reduce questions requiring human answers by 40 percent through automated Slack responses.

Security remained central to Doti's architecture. The platform maintained granular permission controls checking both document-level access and team boundaries. The company offered bring-your-own-database and hybrid deployment options for organizations requiring data sovereignty. Doti held SOC Type II certification and employed AES-256 encryption for stored data and TLS 1.2+ for data in transit.

The acquisition extends Salesforce's pattern of purchasing specialized AI capabilities. Salesforce acquired Zoomin in September 2024 to enhance unstructured data management for its AI CRM platform. The company also acquired PredictSpring in August 2024 to strengthen omnichannel retail capabilities through point-of-sale technology integration.

Financial terms of the Doti acquisition were not disclosed. Salesforce stated the transaction does not result in changes to current financial guidance, suggesting the deal's scale falls below materiality thresholds for the company's revenue projections.

Doti differentiated itself from competitors through intelligent agents rather than basic search aggregation. The company's agents understood team-specific needs, priorities, and preferred formats, delivering customized results beyond simple keyword matching. This approach aligns with broader industry movement toward agentic AI systems that perform active tasks rather than passive information retrieval.

The integration with Slack positions conversational interfaces as the primary interaction model for enterprise search. Slack's existing usage patterns provide natural contexts for surfacing relevant information, insights, and actions from across organizational systems. This approach contrasts with traditional search portals requiring employees to leave their workflow to find information.

Enterprise search performance gaps remain significant despite technology advances. Research from Salesforce AI Research in June 2025 showed leading AI agents achieving only 58 percent success rates in single-turn business scenarios, with performance declining to 35 percent in multi-turn interactions. These limitations highlight challenges facing enterprise AI deployment.

The Doti platform supported both owned properties and external channels including Wikipedia and public forums. The system incorporated standards for Agent-to-Agent and Model Context Protocol, providing interoperability with third-party workflow solutions. This standards-based approach aligns with emerging protocols in the advertising and marketing technology sectors, where multiple companies launched the Ad Context Protocol in October 2025 to enable AI agents to communicate across platforms.

Doti's customer base included companies across security, web analytics, payment processing, and technology sectors. The company showcased case studies from Orca Security, Similarweb, Next Silicon, Bringg, and Plaarium. These implementations focused on automating support workflows, reducing search time, and improving information accessibility for distributed teams.

The acquisition strengthens Salesforce's presence in Israel's technology sector. The country hosts significant AI research talent and development capabilities that Salesforce seeks to leverage for platform advancement. Israel's AI research community contributed to developments across natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning that power enterprise applications.

Customary closing conditions apply to the transaction. Regulatory approvals and standard acquisition requirements must be satisfied before the deal completes. The fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2026 extends from February through April 2026, establishing the expected timeline for closure.

The unified search layer development represents a technical challenge requiring integration across Salesforce's extensive product portfolio. The platform includes Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and numerous other applications serving different business functions. Creating coherent search experiences across these disparate systems requires significant architectural work.

Data privacy and compliance requirements add complexity to enterprise search implementation. Organizations operating in regulated industries face strict controls on information access and sharing. The search system must respect these boundaries while providing useful results to authorized users across organizational hierarchies.

Real-time data synchronization presents another technical hurdle. Doti's claimed 20-times-daily update frequency requires continuous monitoring of connected systems for changes. Maintaining accuracy while scaling to Salesforce's customer base demands robust infrastructure and efficient processing.

The acquisition follows broader consolidation trends across marketing technology and enterprise software sectors. Companies seek comprehensive platforms rather than best-of-breed point solutions, driving mergers and acquisitions that combine specialized capabilities into unified offerings. This consolidation aims to reduce integration complexity and provide seamless user experiences.

Timeline

• November 13, 2025: Salesforce announces definitive agreement to acquire Doti
• September 24, 2024: Salesforce signs agreement to acquire Zoomin for unstructured data capabilities
• September 19, 2024: Salesforce launches Agentforce platform at Dreamforce conference
• August 1, 2024: Salesforce announces acquisition of PredictSpring for retail POS capabilities
• Q4 FY2026 (February-April 2026): Expected transaction closing date

Summary

Who: Salesforce, the enterprise CRM platform provider, is acquiring Doti, an agentic enterprise search company founded by CEO Matan Cohen. Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack, will oversee the integration of Doti's technology into Salesforce's platform.

What: The acquisition brings Doti's agentic search technology to Salesforce, enabling unified search capabilities across the platform with Slack as the conversational interface. Doti's platform integrates with tools including Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, Zendesk, and Salesforce to provide instant access to organizational information.

When: Salesforce signed the definitive agreement on November 13, 2025. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2026, which runs from February through April 2026.

Where: The acquisition strengthens Salesforce's AI research and development hub in Israel, where Doti's team is based. The integration will affect Salesforce's global customer base across its platform applications and Slack deployments.

Why: The acquisition accelerates Salesforce's vision to reinvent enterprise search through AI agents, supporting the company's goal of deploying billions of agents for customers. Doti's technology addresses persistent challenges around scattered information, outdated search results, and inefficient knowledge discovery that hamper employee productivity across enterprise organizations.