Irish tech unicorn Fin acquired by Salesforce in €3.1bn deal

Led by Eoghan McCabe, Fin rebranded from Intercom this year to reflect its shift to AI customer agents 

CEO of Fin Eoghan McCabe. (Photo by Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference)

Irish-founded tech unicorn Fin, formerly Intercom, is being acquired by software giant Salesforce in a $3.6bn (€3.1bn) deal.

Fin co-founder and chief executive Eoghan McCabe announced on social media that the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's 2027 fiscal year.

Founded in 2011, Intercom was founded by Mr McCabe alongside Des Traynor, Ciarán Lee and David Barrett as a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform offering in-app messaging and customer support tools. In 2018, the company achieved unicorn status, reaching a €1bn valuation and becoming one of Ireland's largest home-grown private tech firms.

Last month, Intercom rebranded to Fin, which is the brand name of its AI solution. Since the advent of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Fin has pivoted heavily towards the emerging technology, creating AI chatbots, investing in custom large language models and deploying it across services, sales and ecommerce.

The company's AI agent is capable of resolving customer queries across email, WhatsApp, SMS, phone, live chat and Slack.

"We changed our name to cap our transformation just weeks ago," Mr McCabe wrote on Monday. "We were a darling of the SaaS era and invented so many of the patterns you see in software today. 

"Nearly four years ago, in need of a reboot, we jumped on weeks-old modern LLMs to create and define the category we know as Customer Agents today."

Headquartered in San Francisco, Fin also operates offices in Dublin, Chicago, Sydney and London, employing around 1,400 people in total and serving 12,000 customers. 

“We’re thrilled to welcome Fin to Salesforce as we enable every company to become an agentic enterprise,” said Marc Benioff, chair and chief executive of Salesforce. 

“Fin brings proven agent technology, a deep commitment to customer success, and an incredible AI team that will complement Agentforce with powerful service agent capabilities. 

"Together, we’ll help companies of every size seize this opportunity — accelerating time to value with trusted agents that deliver measurable outcomes at scale.”

“This is a major win for consumers of the world,” said McCabe. “Our technology has defined this category and set the new standards for what great customer service looks like today. By joining forces with Salesforce, we can deploy it far and wide at a rate far faster than we could have ever achieved on our own.”

Mr McCabe said little will "practically change," following the deal, confirming that he will remain CEO of the company, with Des Traynor retaining his role as head of R&D. 

Speaking on Benioff, McCabe called him the "final boss" of tech founder CEOs and one of the "last of his era."

"It’s a privilege for Des Traynor and I to get to partner with him and join forces with Salesforce upon close at this most fascinating time. And it will be very fun to get their help bringing Fin to magnitudes more consumers."

Intercom posted record revenues of €246m in 2024, before its rebranding to Fin, up from €226m in previous year, accounts filed with the Company Registrations Office (CRO) show.