Salesforce.com had weighed 14 possible acquisition targets in May, including Adobe Systems, according to leaked emails, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The list of potential targets was from thousands of emails of current Salesforce board member and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, which were published last month by "hacktivist" group DCLeaks, the report said.
While Twitter wasn't included among the potential targets in the May presentation, software company Salesforce had considered Adobe, which has a market capitalization slightly larger than Salesforce, as well as Pegasystems, Demandware and LinkedIn, the report said.
Salesforce agreed to acquire Demandware in June, but Pegasystems said it had not held any acquisition talks with the company, the report said.
In an emailed statement, Salesforce told CNBC, "Salesforce has a disciplined and thoughtful M&A process where we routinely survey the industry landscape across a wide range of companies, but acquire very few. The presentation is a broad survey of publicly traded companies in May 2016, and the appearance of company names on the list doesn't imply Salesforce ever intended to acquire them."
Salesforce noted that Adobe appeared in the list only as a "benchmark" for other possible targets.
Earlier this month, Salesforce, which was among a handful of bidders for Twitter, ruled out a bid. In June, Microsoft agreed to buy LinkedIn.
Adobe and Pegasystems did not immediately return CNBC's emailed requests for comment, which were sent outside of office hours.