Salesforce to buy Rune, a military supply startup, in a reported $375 million deal

Salesforce, the San Francisco business-software giant, agreed to buy Rune Technologies, a young startup that makes AI tools for military supply planning, Salesforce announced Oct. 29.  Salesforce did not disclose the price.  Resilience Media, a defense-tech news site, reported it at $375 million in cash and Salesforce stock, citing two people familiar with the deal.

Rune was founded in July 2024 in Arlington, Va., by David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough, who worked together at defense tech company Anduril, according to Rune.  Tuttle, the CEO, is a former Army officer who served with the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs the military's elite special-operations units.  Goldsborough, the technology chief, was an engineer at Facebook's AI research lab, Rune's website says.

Its main product, TyrOS, is meant to replace the whiteboards and spreadsheets many units still use to track supplies, Tuttle said in 2025.  It predicts what food, fuel and parts frontline units will need and suggests routes to deliver them.  It keeps working where troops have little or no internet, such as when an enemy jams signals, then syncs when the connection returns.  In August, Army soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, tested it on tablets as a replacement for paper vehicle-maintenance manuals, the Army said.

Rune came out of secrecy in February 2025 with $6.2 million in early, or seed, funding led by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, then raised a $24 million round led by Human Capital in July 2025, the company announced.  In all it has raised about $30 million, including from IQT, the CIA-backed investment firm formerly known as In-Q-Tel, TechCrunch and Resilience Media reported.  Its last valuation was $127 million, according to data firm PitchBook, or $134 million, according to a Resilience Media source.

Rune's customers are mainly the U.S. military.  In June the Army gave it a five-year contract worth up to $99 million, and in October the Army chose TyrOS to run supply planning for I Corps, one of its large field commands, Rune said.  Contract amounts like these are ceilings, not guaranteed payments.  Rune is privately held and has not disclosed its revenue or whether it makes a profit.

Rune will join Missionforce, the Salesforce unit launched in 2025 that sells software to the military and national security agencies.  Salesforce says that defense business grew 80% in a year, has customers in all six military branches and won a 10-year Army contract worth up to $5.6 billion.  So far that work has centered on back-office record keeping and planning, Resilience Media and TechCrunch reported.

Salesforce describes three layers of military operations: record systems at headquarters, strategic planning, and the "operational edge," where frontline units work.  It says Missionforce covers the first two and Rune "completes the third."  Under the plan, supply decisions made on a laptop in the field would flow into the Salesforce systems the services already use for personnel, maintenance and purchasing, updating when the network returns.  Salesforce also plans to bring "agent-powered" tools, AI programs that carry out tasks, to the front lines.  Rune already offers one, Saga, which answers supply questions in plain language, its website says.

Salesforce is best known for customer-relationship management software that companies use to track sales and customers.  It had $41.5 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, 2026, the company reported.  It has been on a buying spree this year, including AI customer-service company Fin for $3.6 billion, TechCrunch reported, and called Rune its "most significant" national security deal.

For Rune's investors, the reported price is nearly three times the startup's last valuation.  The deal is expected to close by Jan. 31, 2027, the end of Salesforce's fiscal year.  Neither company has said whether any jobs will be cut.

Source:  Salesforce, Oct. 29, 2026, Resilience Media, Oct. 30, 2026, TechCrunch, Oct. 30, 2026, Washington Technology, Oct. 30, 2026, Rune Technologies, Rune Technologies, Feb. 26, 2025, Rune Technologies, July 21, 2025, Rune Technologies, Oct. 7, 2026, U.S. Army via DVIDS, Sept. 1, 2026 and Salesforce, Feb. 2026.