Dive Brief:
- Salesforce closed 200 Agentforce deals in a single week with thousands more in the pipeline, CEO Marc Benioff said Tuesday during the Q3 earnings call for the period ending Oct. 31. Quarterly revenues were up 8% year over year, totaling $9.4 billion.
- Enterprise adopters including FedEx, ACE Hardware and Adecco are already building “digital labor forces” with the platform, Benioff said. The company plans to hire around 1,000 to 2,000 sales workers to ramp up the adoption of Agentforce.
- The platform went into general availability in October, though the company plans to unveil the next generation of the technology in less than two weeks on Dec. 17.
Dive Insight:
Agentic AI is top of mind for tech vendors as they position themselves to capitalize on enterprise interest. Salesforce started its AI agent campaign early but it isn’t alone. Microsoft, Meta and SAP have all started making agentic capabilities generally available.
While analysts believe the technology is promising, many sound the alarm about widescale deployments of the technology in its existing state. Enterprises are already showing interest in agentic AI, with more than 4 in 5 leaders planning to integrate agents in the next three years, according to a Capgemini survey.
“It's going to have dramatic implications for our company from not only the technology point of view, but also from a human resource point of view,” Benioff said during the call.
Adding agents to enterprise tech stacks will lead to shifts in security strategies, analysts predict. By 2028, 1 out of every 4 enterprise breaches will be attributed to AI agent abuse, according to Gartner research.
