Unaric accelerates UK AI momentum with acquisition of marketing platform DESelect – its ninth deal in two years

London, 9 October: Unaric – the fast-growing UK tech firm helping Salesforce customers unlock AI opportunities with its suite of advanced applications and AI agents – has today announced its ninth acquisition in two years: buying DESelect, a US-based Salesforce independent software vendor (ISV) for an eight-figure sum. 

Founded in 2023 by Peter Lindhom, James Gasteen, Moritz Birke and Neil Crawford, Unaric’s mission is to help Salesforce customers scale smarter, move faster and deliver better experiences by converting fragmented apps to AI agents that bring the platform together.

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Seismic AI shift

Once in the business of selling CRM software, Salesforce has rebranded as the digital labour platform for the AI era – moving from single apps towards cross-platform AI agents as part of its Agentforce vision. Yet while the platform is increasingly AI-ready, many of the apps-turned-agents still function in siloes, with disjointed UX and proprietary data meaning they can’t scale to the level Salesforce’s mid-market and enterprise customers need.  

Through its acquisition approach, Unaric is not only accelerating this AI shift by helping the individual apps convert into agents, but in doing so, it’s directly feeding into the Agentforce vision; bringing agents together into a truly unified platform where data, features and AI power are connected, intelligent and scalable. 

Having acquired close to 20 applications through its nine deals to date across the UK, US and Europe, this model has seen Unaric achieve 100% year-on-year revenue growth, grow its customer base to 3,000 organisations and 150,000 Salesforce users worldwide, and scale its team to over 100 in just two years. 

The addition of DESelect further strengthens this. While Unaric already brings structured first- and third-party data into Salesforce – including over 25 million calls, $2bn of payment transactions and more than 200 external data sources via its Reports product – DESelect makes that data more useful for marketers. 

In particular, it offers a marketing optimisation platform for Salesforce Marketing Cloud customers to better segment and engage their audiences. This already feeds into Salesforce’s $4.4bn Commerce and Marketing Cloud revenue line and with a strong footprint across Europe and the US, DESelect customers cover Automotive, Financial Services, Public Sector and Retail industries and include Motorpoint, Transport for London, Eroski and ShareNow.

James Gasteen, CEO and Co-Founder of Unaric, said: “AI is reshaping how enterprises work inside Salesforce and Unaric is at the centre of that change. Legacy tools are struggling to keep pace with the scale and complexity of modern data, but by turning traditional applications into AI agents, we’re enabling businesses to unlock far greater intelligence and productivity. We’re delighted to welcome Anthony, Jonathan and the DESelect team to Unaric.”

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AI momentum and opportunity

Salesforce recently backed its Agentforce vision with a $6B commitment to make the UK its European hub for AI innovation and to fuel the rise of so-called “Agentic Enterprises.” UK-led AI innovation is expected to generate $41B in economic benefits and 500,000 jobs for the country by 2028 and Salesforce is establishing itself as a global leader in this Digital Labour Force. 

Unaric’s ninth acquisition in two years accelerates this momentum, supported by Salesforce’s expanding AI ecosystem including its London AI Center and backing of ventures in UK-based AI companies like ElevenLabs and Climate X. 

It’s an ecosystem and model that has already produced global leaders like $47Bn life sciences software firm, Veeva Systems and $3B fintech Ncino. Both of which were built and scaled on top of Salesforce. Salesforce itself acquired ISV OwnBackup for $1.9B last year and now Unaric is applying this same playbook to AI, consolidating apps into a unified agent-driven platform and further demonstrating the momentum and opportunity that’s still untapped. 

Anthony Lamot, CEO and Co-Founder of DESelect said: “What started out as an idea for a segmentation app seven years ago has turned into a marketing optimisation platform used by enterprise businesses around the world. We’re excited to join Unaric as we enter the next phase of our growth and expand our AI offering. We’ve been impressed by the Unaric team and the growth they’ve achieved in the past two years, and we’re excited to join them on this journey.”

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