Good morning.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff this week announced Agentforce 2.0, a further evolution towards autonomous AI agents that act as digital labor. Benioff thinks 2025 will be the year when AI starts to truly transform business and disrupt how we work. And he’s going to hire 2,000 people to sell it.
He started writing and selling software at 15 and for the past 25 years has been a pioneer in enterprise software and corporate philanthropy. I spoke with the Salesforce co-founder about leadership, business and AI in the latest episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast. You can listen on Apple or Spotify.
“We’re about to move into a completely new world, and I don’t really have all the words yet,” he said. “I’ve never been more excited about software, more energized or motivated, more inspired. It’s not very often that you get to learn so many new things all at once.”
Benioff thinks the roster of AI winners is far from set. He has been a longtime critic of Microsoft’s Copilot product specifically. “Microsoft has been a disappointment to many of our customers with Copilot … That’s because, to make AI work and deliver the agentic layer, you have to ground it in data and metadata. You have to give it your workflow and really let it know who your business is,” and Copilot doesn’t do that, he says.
While Benioff apparently has not joined his tech brethren in contributing to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, he says he’s excited about what’s coming. “Administrations change. Presidents change. Our core values don’t change. It’s about trust, that’s number one. It’s about customer success, it’s about innovation, it’s about equality, it’s about sustainability.”
Of course, a new administration is also a new beginning, of sorts.
“Shoshin [a concept from Zen Buddhism] is the beginner’s mind. As a CEO, you’ve got a lot coming at you all the time. In your beginner’s mind, you have every possibility, but in your expert’s mind, you have few,” Benioff says. “Every day, I have a meditation practice … I need to have a beginner’s mind, because this is very different from anything that’s ever happened before.”
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams.
