Salesforce's management is facing additional pressure from investors.

The hedge fund Elliott has bought into the US software group for several billion dollars, insiders told Reuters on Monday. Investors were impressed by the entry of billionaire Paul Singer's hedge fund into the cloud pioneer and SAP rival. In pre-market trading in the US, Salesforce shares rose by around four percent.

"We look forward to working constructively with Salesforce to realize the value that is appropriate for a company of its size," Jesse Cohn, partner at Elliott, told Reuters. It initially remained unclear what goal the investor was pursuing with the industry leader in customer relationship management (CRM) software. Salesforce was initially unavailable for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the deal.

Last October, another activist investor, Starboard Value, joined Salesforce. It justified the investment with a low valuation due to a "below-average mix of growth and profitability" and has since been pushing for an improvement in the latter in particular. Salesforce then announced the reduction of around 7,000 jobs at the beginning of January. This corresponds to around ten percent of the workforce.

Investors such as Elliott and Starboard Value are known for getting heavily involved in the business of companies despite their relatively small holdings. They demand measures from the management that drive up the shares. This can involve mergers, sales of shares or cost-cutting programs.

(Report by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Sneha Bhowmik and Juby Babu in Bengaluru; with the assistance of Tiyashi Datta; written by Hakan Ersen, edited by Ralf Banser. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).