SAN FRANCISCO, May 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. leading cloud-based software company Salesforce said Tuesday it has acquired cloud data management firm Informatica in an 8-billion-U.S.-dollar equity deal.

The announcement marked a major move in its push to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) and data infrastructure capabilities, giving Salesforce more data infrastructure and governance to help its AI agents run more "safely, responsibly, and at scale across the modern enterprise," according to the company.

"This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible, and deeply integrated with the world's data," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in the press release.

Under the deal, Salesforce will pay 25 dollars in cash per share for Informatica's Class A and Class B-1 common stock.

Informatica was founded in 1993 and works with more than 5,000 customers across more than 100 countries. The company had a 7.1-billion-dollar market cap.