Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has spent the past year steering the cloud computing pioneer’s “hard pivot” to Agentforce—its new platform for deploying autonomous AI agents that can plan and execute tasks across business workflows. Benioff is, unsurprisingly, extremely bullish on the technology: In June, he claimed that AI now performs up to 50% of the company’s work. Wall Street’s response has been more measured. Since Agentforce’s splashy debut at the Dreamforce conference last September, Salesforce shares have swung between optimism and skepticism—rising to a high of $367 in December 2024 before sliding amid softer-than-expected guidance and questions about whether the AI agent strategy can drive near-term revenue growth. In May the company beat second-quarter earnings expectations with 7.6% year-over-year revenue growth, and announced its largest acquisition since Slack in 2021: an $8 billion deal for data management firm Informatica.