Covington Advises Salesforce on Acquisition of Listen Labs

NEW YORK/PALO ALTO/SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON—Covington advised Salesforce in connection with its definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research and human simulation platform.

Listen Labs’s AI agents design studies, conduct in-depth research, and synthesize insights, automating the lifecycle of connecting with customers and analyzing their feedback. The platform streamlines this process from months to days, helping turn qualitative feedback into actionable insights for decision-makers and context for agents at scale.

The acquisition will expand Salesforce’s customer and user understanding capabilities, complementing Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and its broader AI portfolio. With Listen Labs, Salesforce will empower companies worldwide to move beyond static surveys and traditional market research to understand and simulate what customers will do and why, and then turn those insights into action.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027, subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of required regulatory clearance.

The Covington team was led by John Fisher, Brad Chernin, Tomas Rua, Devony Schmidt, and Jim O’Connell.