A rumor of the enterprise communications platform Slack being on the cusp of a possible Salesforce acquisition has sent the company’s shares soaring high, rising up 37.6% just on Wednesday. Slack closed the day at $40.70 per share, a 52-week high for the company and slightly above its public market debut price of $38.50.

The rumor of a Salesforce acquisition of Slack first came from the Wall Street Journal, whereas the paper notes that both companies could reach a deal “within days”. Given Slack’s market value of well over $20 billion, an acquisition by Salesforce will likely be the software giant’s biggest acquisition ever, more so for a company that has routinely spent billions of dollars on acquisitions.

For now, Salesforce’s biggest acquisition was when it paid $15.7 billion in an all-stock deal to acquire Tableau Software just last year. Now, it seems that the company could be breaking that record after just another year.

Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is known to be a brash dealmaker and has in the past targeted big acquisitions including LinkedIn and Twitter that didn’t pan out. He has, however, as Salesforce’s long-time CEO overseen acquisitions amounting to tens of billions of dollars. 

Benioff has guided Salesforce ever since he founded the company back in 1999, making use of strategic acquisitions to expand the company to a point where it pulled in $17.1 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year.

For Slack, a Salesforce acquisition will be very notable and make it one of the biggest success stories from the software industry, more so for a company founded only seven years ago. 

Slack went public through a direct listing in April last year and now could be heading towards an acquisition in less than two years after its public market debut. 

Photo: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield by Stuart Isett/Fortune is licensed under Creative Commons

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