Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on AI skepticism, its future, and battle with Palantir

Salesforce (CRM) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff has a lot on his mind, from growing his AI agent technology to swatting away the naysayers to competing with Palantir (PLTR) for government contracts.

"We have more than 12,000 AgentForce customers now, and that's up from zero nine months ago," Benioff told me at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. "Our data cloud and our agents together, we're doing about $1.2 billion in revenue already. It's a triple-digit grower in our company."

Salesforce stock got hit last Thursday after the company's earnings reports didn't wow investors. Growing concern on the Street centers around the pace of AI demand by corporations, given a slowing US economy. There are also fears around how AI will challenge traditional software.

For its part, Salesforce said it sees third quarter sales growth slowing to 8%-9%. In the second quarter, sales gained 10%. It only raised its full-year non-GAAP operating margin guidance to 34.1% from 34% previously.

The company's closely watched current remaining performance obligations rose 11% to $29.4 billion, ahead of estimates.

In the three quarters since Salesforce launched its AI agent platform Agentforce, it has won more than 6,000 paid deals, per the company.

NYSE - Nasdaq Real Time Price•USD

(CRM)

Follow View Quote Details

244.66

-7.40

(-2.94%)

As of 2:32:39 PM EDT. Market Open. Advanced Chart

It has also taken government business from meme crowd favorite Palantir, Benioff said.

"They're an inspiring company. You know, they even call themselves the eighth wonder of the world now," Benioff said. "They have products on there that are billions of dollars, and I am like, wait, my prices are way too low, because I can't believe the prices that they're charging their customers."

Benioff is focused on getting the company's top line back to double-digit growth rates and has dispelled anxieties that AI will destroy the software industry.

"I think this is where a lot of people have gotten confused with AI," Benioff explained, adding that people who say "there's some kind of threat to the software industry are not in the software industry."

Wall Street is generally staying optimistic on Salesforce. More than 60% of the sell-side analysts that cover Salesforce rate the stock a Buy, according to Yahoo Finance data. Shares are down 24% year to date.

"Salesforce trades at an attractive 15x 2026E estimated enterprise value/free cash flow vs. peers at 28x, a 47% discount," Evercore ISI analyst Brent Thill said. "While we continue to believe that investor fears of AI eating software are overblown, the multiple may remain impaired until Salesforce can meaningfully monetize AI."

Story Continues

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email [email protected].

Check out Yahoo Finance's full coverage of Goldman Sachs' Communacopia Conference:

Verizon CEO says SpaceX's $17 billion 5G deal will be 'complementary' to business AI will be major 'force multiplier' for software: Goldman Sachs Snowflake CEO: Software companies will be profoundly impacted by AI Goldman Sachs chief economist: US economy is in 'stall speed' Pinterest CEO: AI is winning over Gen Z — but growth isn't guaranteed OpenAI CFO: We will more than triple our revenue this year AT&T CEO on economy: There's stress in some consumer segments SailPoint CEO: AI agents promise big gains — and big risks CrowdStrike CEO: AI is unleashing more adversaries for cybersecurity companies to defeat

View Comments