By Roman Aglaganov
Salesforce, best known for sales and customer-service software, is pushing further into defence. On 29 October it signed a definitive agreement to buy Rune Technologies, which makes logistics software for the US military and allied forces. The company calls it its most significant national security acquisition.
What Rune does
Rune’s software helps front-line teams forecast what supplies they will need, decide how to allocate them and plan resupply routes, including in places with little or no connectivity. Salesforce says the platform combines live operational data with records of personnel, equipment and supplies, and uses simulation and optimisation models to recommend resupply and test logistics plans. It is already deployed with the US Army and the Marine Corps. The company was founded in 2024 by David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough, who both previously worked at the defence technology firm Anduril.
Why Salesforce wants it
Rune will join Missionforce, the defence business Salesforce launched a year ago. Salesforce says it is growing 80% a year, has customers in all six branches of the US military and recently won a ten-year US Army contract with a ceiling of $5.6 billion. Missionforce already serves headquarters and enterprise systems; Rune adds software for units in the field, which Salesforce calls an “edge-to-enterprise” platform.
“Salesforce is doubling down on national security with our most significant acquisition in this space,” said Kendall Collins, who runs Missionforce and Salesforce’s government cloud business. Salesforce did not disclose the price; Resilience Media reported, citing two unnamed sources, that it is paying $375 million in cash and shares. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s 2027 financial year, which ends in January 2027, subject to the usual conditions.
The deal follows a broader shift, in which large technology companies that once kept their distance from military work, including AI labs, now sell to defence customers. Logistics is one of the less contested corners of that market: it is about getting fuel, food and parts to the right place, not choosing targets.
