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The software that people working in sales stare at for hours on end is itself selling like hotcakes.
Salesforce shot up 10.99% today after the customer resource management platform purveyor reported strong Q3 revenue and said its recently debuted AI assistant AgentForce is starting to appear in cubicles worldwide.
- Revenue of $9.44 billion exceeded analysts’ expectations and was 8% higher compared to the same period last year.
- Adjusted earnings per share were $2.41, up 14% from a year ago but below analyst expectations (largely a result of losses from investments into other companies).
- Salesforce expects $9.9 billion to $10.1 billion in sales in the current quarter, roughly as analysts projected.
The company says it's counting on an all-out AI push to keep growing its top and bottom lines.
AgentForce reporting for duty
Investors were enthused to hear that AgentForce—an AI assistant that helps answer customer queries and perform other tasks using company data from Salesforce’s system—has been met with interest from customers who are charged $2 per agent conversation.
The company said it delivered on 200 contracts for the tool in just a week following its late-October launch, with corporate giants like FedEx, Accenture, and IBM embracing it. Salesforce itself says it is saving human labor hours by employing AgentForce alongside its flesh-and-blood workers, embedding it into various company functions.
Salesforce CEO Marc Bernioff noted during the earnings call that AgentForce’s “unfair advantage” over other AI assistants is that its output is grounded in Salesforce data, a treasure trove of information about its client businesses and its customers. He stressed that Salesforce has made it easy for its existing customers to try out the tool on its website, which differentiates it from competing products like Microsoft’s Copilot.
Bernioff said he expects the company’s momentum to continue, confirming plans to hire as many as 2,000 new salespeople. The AI-fueled optimism comes after two years of belt-tightening at the Silicon Valley heavyweight and investors dumping its stock this spring after it projected revenue growth to slow down.
But…analysts say that it's too early to tell whether AgentForce can become a major growth engine that keeps Salesforce from turning into a stagnant software giant. Guggenheim analyst John DiFucci expressed skepticism about whether Salesforce could get away with charging extra for a service that might become commonplace, per MarketWatch.—SK