Salesforce to acquire Rune to expand defense business growing 80% annually
Key Facts
Salesforce said it would buy Rune Technologies to expand Missionforce, its business serving the U.S. military and government agencies, according to a Reuters report published by MarketScreener. Rune develops AI-powered software that helps forces anticipate supply needs, plan resource use and determine where to send them. Salesforce said the U.S. Army and Marine Corps already use the company’s technology. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time of the report. It is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal 2027. The acquisition adds Rune’s logistics tools to the company’s efforts to expand Missionforce.
The deal relates to a defense business that Salesforce said has been growing rapidly since Missionforce launched. The company said its defense business grew 80% year over year and that it has customers across all six U.S. military branches. A year after Missionforce launched, Salesforce said the public sector had become its fastest-growing industry business at scale, with defense growing at the same rate. It also said it supports government missions in more than 30 countries, 60 U.S. federal agencies, all 50 states and all six military branches. These figures provide context for the expansion of the government business Salesforce aims to serve through Missionforce.
The expansion comes as the company works to strengthen its presence in government and defense contracts. On September 16, 2026, Salesforce said the U.S. Army had awarded it a 10-year contract with a ceiling of $5.6 billion to expand Missionforce National Security across the Army and the Department of War. The contract provides a framework for expanding the service, but its ceiling does not represent realized revenue. On Rune’s side, the company announced in June 2026 that it had secured a five-year IDIQ contract from the U.S. Army with a ceiling of $99 million. Rune said the contract provides a single procurement pathway for Army organizations, other Department of War components and joint force partners to acquire the TyrOS platform and related services through task orders. The two contracts point to existing procurement pathways for the companies’ tools, with different scopes and ceilings.
Rune dates back to 2024, when David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough founded it in July. The company emerged from stealth in February 2025, announcing $6.2 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund. In July of the same year, it announced a $24 million Series A round led by Human Capital. Its products focus on using software to anticipate supply needs and plan resources, including operations in areas with weak or no connectivity. On October 7, 2026, Rune said the Army had selected the TyrOS platform to provide supply-command capabilities to I Corps, as the NGC2 program moved into production and expanded across the Army. It said the total value of initial NGC2 application awards was about $93.6 million over one year.
The deal is part of a series of acquisitions by Salesforce as investors monitor the impact of AI’s rapid spread on demand for traditional software, according to Reuters. The report said the company had agreed the previous week to buy AI marketing software company Braze for about $5.66 billion. It also struck a $3.6 billion deal earlier in 2026 for the Fin platform for AI agents, according to the report. The previous year, it completed an $8 billion deal to acquire Informatica. The Rune purchase adds a business focused on military logistics to the acquisition portfolio through which Salesforce has broadened its AI offerings. The deal is still expected to close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2027.