Salesforce buys Fin (the company that was Intercom a month ago) for $3.6B
Intercom rebranded to Fin in May, named after its AI support agent, then sold to Salesforce in June. The thread's first reaction wasn't congratulations — it was 'that's cheap,' followed by founders explaining why support bots still don't work.
Fin's pitch is an AI agent that resolves support tickets across chat, email, phone, WhatsApp and Slack, powered by a proprietary model called Apex that it claims beats frontier models on resolution rate.
Two people who built in the space called the category a grift: the bots don't solve the reason a human contacts support in the first place, and customers would rather wait for a person than loop with a wrong answer.
A $3.6B exit, one month after the rename
Salesforce is acquiring Fin — the company known as Intercom until a May rebrand — for about $3.6 billion, per the deal coverage. Fin's product is an AI agent built to run support conversations end to end across live chat, email, phone, WhatsApp, SMS and Slack, powered by Apex, a proprietary model the company says it purpose-built for support and claims beats frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic on resolution rate. The deal brings Salesforce more than 30,000 business customers; founder and CEO Eoghan McCabe said joining lets them deploy "far and wide at a rate far faster than we could have ever achieved on our own."
The thread's opening note was disbelief at the size: "What the hell? That is so cheap?" for a category leader, when private support-AI rivals carry richer tags.
The strategic chessboard behind a "cheap" number
One commenter mapped the board: Sierra is valued around $15.8B and Decagon around $4.5B, and Sierra was founded by Bret Taylor — Benioff's former co-CEO at Salesforce. Read that way, $3.6B isn't a bargain so much as Benioff buying a credible weapon against an ex-lieutenant, and stopping an independent support agent from becoming a control point that sits outside the CRM. From inside the industry, a16z's David Ulevitch cheered the arc — a founder returning to fix his company and landing the exit.
"I was a founder in the space" — and it's a grift
The reversal is that people who've shipped this exact product don't believe in it.
"The 'AI' 'agent' 'helpdesk' they pivoted into is such a grift. AI agents still does not solve the main issues that makes a person contact support in the first place. How do I know? I was a founder in the space." — a former founder in support tooling
A second builder backed the experience with revenue: "I've literally lost sales" to bad bots, because "people would rather wait for a real person than go in loops with a wrong/bad support answer." And a colder take on what Salesforce actually bought: Intercom was "one of those SaaS that I figured had essentially zero value prop once businesses figured out how to train their own support agents" — so the smart move was exiting before that day arrives. The dissent on stewardship was loud too, from a founder who hasn't forgiven the Heroku decline.
You can buy the leader and still not own the problem
The deal is rational on Salesforce's terms: defend Agentforce, deny a rival the CRM-adjacent beachhead, absorb 30,000 customers. What the thread keeps insisting is that the underlying product still fails at the one job — the questions that drive people to contact support are the ones the bot can't close. Salesforce bought market position and a model with a resolution-rate claim. Whether that claim survives contact with a frustrated customer is the part no acquisition settles.
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