Dive Brief:
- Salesforce plans to hire 3,300 employees across several departments, according to a Bloomberg interview with CEO Marc Benioff published Thursday. The company declined to confirm the news or provide additional details about the hiring strategy in an email to CIO Dive.
- The software company will add workers equally throughout the company's sales, engineering data cloud teams, the report said, citing COO Brian Millham.
- The hiring push partly erases the impact of staffing cuts Salesforce announced in January, in response to macroeconomic constraints. The company said at the time it planned to lay off 10% of its workforce, impacting about 8,000 roles.
Dive Insight:
When Salesforce cut staff at the start of the year, the move was part of a broader wave of layoffs across big tech. Google, Microsoft and other global tech giants laid off workers in response to slower growth and elongated sales cycles as the economy slowed.
Now, the tone from technology CEOs is shifting back to growth mode as generative AI commands enterprise adoption interest across industries.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said last month the company would increase its headcount, speaking during its Q2 FY24 earnings call in August. “We are continuing to grow and invest in our headcount, especially in AI,” Benioff said.
The company this week unveiled Einstein Copilot, an out-of-the-box conversational generative AI-powered assistant that will be embedded across its enterprise application suite. It's the latest update in a slew of big tech announcements that infuse AI into existing products.
During the call, Benioff described AI as a new stage in technology innovation that will unleash a "massive tech buying cycle over the coming years."
"Every CEO I've met with this year across every industry believes that AI is essential to improving both their top and bottom line, but especially their productivity," Benioff said. "AI is just augmenting what we can do every single day."
