The CEO of Salesforce has announced that its “next big transformation” will be shifting towards the use of autonomous AI agents.
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Specifically, Salesforce is planning to put its energies behind the new AI agent platform ‘Agentforce’, which allows businesses to create and deploy AI-powered agents that run on Salesforce’s apps and automate some of the repetitive, time-consuming customer service tasks.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO divulged the information to Fortune, but the global business magazine questioned whether this would be enough to stave off the competition, citing analysts that were sceptical.
Benioff also shared that this AI agent technology would be the centrepiece of the CRM giant’s annual conference ‘Dreamforce’ this year: “We have to pivot the whole company to agents, just as we have to Data Cloud in the last two years.
“It’s not going to say, ‘Welcome to Dreamforce’—it’s going to be ‘Welcome to Agentforce’.
“We are going to put thousands of customers through workshops, getting their agents live at Dreamforce.
“We are going to go on a world tour after that, called Agentforce World Tour, with a goal of putting tens of thousands of customers live by January of next year.”
The “In the beginner’s mind, I have every possibility,” he said. “In the expert’s mind, I ask you—am I an expert in CRM? I am. Have I been doing enterprise software for 40 years? I have.”
Benioff added: “This is the next big transformation. The question is, what is the future of CRM? What is the future for all of our businesses and customers and companies?”.
According to Fortune, Benioff is convinced that the answer to this question is ‘AI’.
Salesforce AI and the Future of CRM
Previously, Salesforce has invested in AI startups like Anthropic, Cohere, and Together AI.
Benioff told Fortune that he is not looking to acquire teams developing LLMs, like Microsoft and Amazon have recently. He explained: “Model teams are going to be duplicative for what we already have.”
Instead, Salesforce opted to buy the AI agent builder startup, Airkit, in 2023. Since then, the co-founder Adam Evans has become the SVP of product for the Salesforce AI platform.
Critics like Rishi Jaluria, Managing Director, Software Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets, believes the company is full of hot air, so to speak, as it has not yet delivered on any of its game changing plans.
He also believes that the major players in the CRM industry have got a big challenge ahead: “Generative AI is going to change the way salespeople work, but unless the incumbents can use the head start, they have to actually reimagine the way they do things; it can be really difficult.”
In response, Benioff reportedly ‘shrugged off’ these concerns by pointing to its long list of customers and companies that are already trying out Agentforce and have apparently confirmed what a breakthrough it is.
Benioff confidently reflected:
“Could there be another hot company coming along? I hope so, I mean, it’s the history of our industry, and God bless all of them.
“But we’re also going to do our best as well—this isn’t our first rodeo, and we have a lot of assets to bring to bear, and I think for our customers, we’ll find out over the next six months.”
Earlier this month, Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire ‘Own Company’ for $1.9BN.
Own Company is a prominent SaaS data backup, management, and recovery solutions provider that has also been a close partner of Salesforce.
