# Marc Benioff Predicts Half of Conversations Will be With AI Agents Next Year

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Marc Benioff says enterprises will pair AI agents with people, with agents handling half of conversations across key business functions.

- Show: The Logan Bartlett Show
- Hosts: [Logan Bartlett](https://realalpha.app/people/logan-bartlett/)
- Guest: [Marc Benioff](https://realalpha.app/builders/marc-benioff/) is cofounder and CEO of Salesforce.
- Published: Aug 29, 2025
- Length: 42 min

## The best minutes

- [2:19](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=139) [AI agents are filling Salesforce’s neglected sales pipeline](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-agents-are-filling-salesforces-neglected-sales-pipeline/) (3 min)
- [12:56](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=776) [Benioff expects customer work to split evenly between agents and people](https://realalpha.app/s/benioff-expects-customer-work-to-split-evenly-between-agents/) (4 min)
- [38:07](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2287) [Today’s LLMs are powerful but limited by finite data and algorithms](https://realalpha.app/s/todays-llms-are-powerful-but-limited-by-finite-data-and/) (3 min)

## Also worth watching

- [19:35](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1175) [Customers are asking for enterprise-wide agent pricing](https://realalpha.app/s/customers-are-asking-for-enterprise-wide-agent-pricing/) (3 min)
- [25:44](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1544) [Salesforce is testing pre-sale engineering to win deployments](https://realalpha.app/s/salesforce-is-testing-pre-sale-engineering-to-win/) (3 min)
- [17:10](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1030) [Salesforce's AI and data line passed $1 billion](https://realalpha.app/s/salesforces-ai-and-data-line-passed-1-billion/) (3 min)
- [8:11](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=491) [Salesforce is entering ITSM with a Slack-first agent model](https://realalpha.app/s/salesforce-is-entering-itsm-with-a-slack-first-agent-model/) (4 min)
- [5:14](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=314) [Enterprise agents still need specialized application interfaces](https://realalpha.app/s/enterprise-agents-still-need-specialized-application/) (3 min)

Skip the startup-investment stories, AI-company operating advice and career discussion before the final AI-limits debate.

## Full analysis: Marc Benioff says agents are headed for a 50/50 conversation split

- Benioff describes 1.5 million agent and human support conversations each over the next year, and a 50/50 direction elsewhere.
- Salesforce reports lower support staffing and about-equal CSAT, but omits cost per case and lead conversion data.
- Treat the split as a forecast to test, not a staffing plan; price integration and oversight too.

Its 7 sections, what it means for you and what to watch are on [the page](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/#analysis), free with an account:

- [3:02](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=182) Agents are reopening Salesforce’s unworked sales pipeline
- [1:30](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=90) Support cuts accompany similar customer satisfaction
- [6:17](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=377) Agents still depend on enterprise applications and data
- [16:11](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=971) Benioff sees a 50/50 conversation direction
- [17:44](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1064) The billion-dollar line bundles AI and data
- [20:47](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1247) Customers want an enterprise package before pricing settles
- [39:14](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2354) Benioff says today’s models remain bounded

## Summary

Marc Benioff is the cofounder and CEO of Salesforce. He says Salesforce is using its own products to test AI agents in customer support, sales and marketing before deploying them with customers.

Benioff argues that AI agents will augment people and enterprise software, not make applications obsolete. He cites Salesforce’s own use of agents in support, sales and marketing, and predicts that agents will handle half of conversations across key business functions. He says reliable enterprise agents depend on integrated data, applications and oversight, while adoption and pricing will vary by customer. Benioff also argues that current language models remain limited and that leadership, trust and execution still matter.

### Minute by minute

- [0:34](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=34) **Salesforce applies agents across operations.** Benioff says Salesforce handled about 1.5 million customer conversations through its AI service agents, while human support agents handled the same number, with similar CSAT scores. He says he reduced support staffing from 9,000 to about 5,000 and shifted capacity toward sales. Sales agents now contact more than 10,000 leads a week, and a website agent handles visitor questions.
- [4:56](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=296) **Enterprise apps retain specialized roles.** Benioff rejects the idea that software and applications will simply disappear. He argues that specialized workflows still need powerful interfaces built on trusted data. He says Salesforce’s data and application layers support agents in Slack that handle renewals, support and employee requests.
- [8:11](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=491) **Enterprise agents need integrated systems.** Benioff says Salesforce is entering IT service management with a Slack-first agentic product. In examples involving Eaton and PG&E, he says field workers use agents alongside mobile apps, with interactions stored in a system of record. He argues that enterprise use requires data, applications, agents and language models to work together.
- [12:56](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=776) **Agents need human oversight.** Benioff says agents need defined tone, guardrails and rules for escalating difficult cases to people. He expects conversations in sales, service, marketing and field service to move toward a 50/50 split between agents and humans. He compares an agent’s handoff to a self-driving car asking a driver to take control.
- [17:33](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1053) **Salesforce data products are growing fast.** Benioff says Salesforce’s AI and data product line is its fastest-growing ever, has passed $1 billion and is tracking toward $2 billion in revenue. He credits demand for bringing customer data together through products including Data Cloud and MuleSoft, as well as the planned Informatica acquisition.
- [19:35](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1175) **Agent pricing has several models.** Benioff describes four approaches: per-seat pricing, consumption pricing, conversational pricing or flex credits, and a broader agentic enterprise agreement. He says customers want to buy more of their needs in a package than he expected as they expand agents across business functions.
- [23:16](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1396) **Adoption varies by business size.** Benioff divides the market into five segments, from small businesses to government and very large enterprises, and says their products and adoption speeds differ. He predicts AI will enable a sharp increase in small businesses. As an enterprise example, he says Pfizer has deployed Agentforce to 20,000 sales professionals.
- [26:32](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1592) **Salesforce is testing forward deployment.** Benioff says Salesforce is inspired by Palantir’s forward-deployed engineering approach, in which engineers build applications before a deal closes, and is testing it to speed customer acquisition. He also says Salesforce beat Palantir for a publicly announced U.S. Army deployment, citing lower prices and easier deployment as advantages.
- [28:35](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1715) **AI startups still have room to grow.** Benioff says Salesforce Ventures has backed companies including Anthropic, Wiz, Snowflake and Databricks. He describes meeting two 18-year-old founders building with Anthropic tools and credits, and argues that Silicon Valley innovation remains active.
- [31:53](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1913) **Leadership and execution still matter.** Benioff points to You.com and Artera as AI-first companies in his portfolio, citing search tools and cancer diagnostics as distinct examples. He says leaders need a clear outcome, strong values, quality teams, fast execution and revenue growth, especially in sensitive areas such as cancer care.
- [35:54](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2154) **Young workers can spot new opportunities.** Benioff advises young professionals to create and deliver value rather than rely on a fixed degree path. He says AI-native interns and young founders can spot gaps in business processes and products, and argues that companies would lose insight and energy if they avoid hiring people fresh out of college.
- [37:44](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2264) **Current language models remain limited.** Benioff argues that current language models are powerful but are not AGI because they rely on finite algorithms and datasets and cannot perform every function. He describes GPT-5 as more evolutionary than revolutionary compared with GPT-4. He cites the body’s production of immune cells near sick people as a capability he says current models do not reproduce.

## Transcript

The Logan Bartlett Show, hosted by Logan Bartlett, with Marc Benioff.

From the transcript The Logan Bartlett Show publishes with the episode.

[0:00](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=0) there were more than a hundred million leads that we have not called back at sales force in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people. So we just couldn't call them back, but we have now an agentex sales just for our own company more than 10,000 leads a week right now having conversations, turning them into pipeline. Our pipelines have never been more full and a lot of it has to do with that we're feeding them with this agentex capability and so our sales people are also now part and parcel in partnership with these agents as well. Mark thank you for doing this. Oh yeah it's great to be with you Logan.

[0:35](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=35) So I think it's been eight months or so since we had the last conversation. I think we're seeing a lot of at least I'm seeing a lot of end of software. This is the end of application software as we know it going on. I guess what's your perspective over the last eight months and some of the rhetoric about this that we know we're no longer going to see the commercial opportunity for software that we've seen in the past. Well I think there's two things you know you look at the last eight months I mean it's been eight of the most exciting months I think of my career. When you look at what's happened with applications and with software it's pretty awesome. If you remember our conversation was all about agent force and we were getting ready to play agent force on our support layer and now we have and I just tell you like we're customer zero for our new agentech service and support product that sales force. So we have now done about a million and a half conversations with customers and at the same time that's the agentech layer speaking to the customers. A million and a half conversations also happened through our support agents during that same period and the CSAT scores were about the same which was studying and also I was able to

[1:51](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=111) rebalance my head kind of my support. I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads but there's also an omnichannel supervisor now that's kind of helping those agents and those humans work together and this is the most exciting thing that's happened you know in the last nine months for sales force and we also are deploying thousands of customers with the same vision. I want to dive into some of those things that you brought up in a bit but I guess I'm curious the agent force and you mentioned the the cost reduction or the ability to kind of manage costs within customer support and I think engineering as well you guys have been able to manage what the headcount and scalability of that looks like. Do you think the biggest benefit of AI is going to be cost optimization for organizations or do you think that ultimately we're going to have revenue uplift as well? No definitely not. I think that you know we are all on our path and I feel like I have to pioneer this as my as I said my own customer zero and I just gave you the support example but I have to tell you a good story which is that and something we did not talk about nine months ago which is that there were more than a hundred million

[3:02](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=182) leads that we have not called back at sales force in last 26 years because we have not had enough people so we just couldn't call them back

[3:11](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=191) **Marc Benioff:** but we have now an agentex sales that is calling back every person that contacts us in our company and we're doing it about

[3:20](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=200) just for our own company more than 10,000 leads a week right now having conversations turning them into pipeline our pipelines have never been more full and a lot of it has to do with that we're feeding them with this agentex capability and so our sales people are also now part and parcel in partnership with these agents as well so just in the way that the support people nine months ago I said we were about to do that we now have also done that in sales and I have other examples I can give you because I am on a mission to make sales force an agentex enterprise and I think that this is what can really transform every company as I you can see every balance my support head count as I said so I can now put those heads into sales so I've increased my distribution capacity and now I'm also making sure that I have much more efficiency and productivity in my lead generation and in the ability to actually work with customers that are contacting me even in my website I have deployed an agent on the front of it so if you go to our website you'll see we've taken all of our data from our website put it into our data cloud put an agent on the front of our website now you can talk to our website right through our agent as well and so that just makes the marketing so much

[4:40](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=280) more efficient this is really the beginning of every part of the company having this kind of agentex augmentation it's a force multiplier it's a synergistic effect between me and the agents and we're proving it out first at sales force but we also have thousands of companies that are also deploying this you talk to a lot of investors and you've seen a bunch of technological trends I guess do you think public market investors or investors at large or sort of waiting to see this come to fruition either in the growth rate acceleration or profitability before they really lean in on the themes or what's been the sentiment as you sort of talk to people in the public markets on the investment side well I think you definitely see a lot of confusion with customers or with investors on what does it mean that we're moving into an agentex era does it mean that software and applications go away completely I mean that isn't true for me I don't know if it is true for you I will say I mean this I thought I was having the other day and I'm curious your thoughts on it is like you know I've been long my careers been sort of predicated on investing in software broadly speaking right but I'm definitely going to websites less like in using OpenAI or cloud as the

[5:58](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=358) portal of accessibility in some ways and so I was thinking like will I ultimately use some similar interface and not to say that that's going to capture value that you wouldn't otherwise capture but I do wonder about the interface element and usability changing well I think it sales force what we have really seen is that in the type of applications that were to point on the automation that we provide to enterprise professionals so I can't give you the example of you know our support center where we have an omnichannel

[6:29](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=389) **Marc Benioff:** supervisor that's managing humans and agents together there's no better interface that I've seen or I would use it on top of our data foundation

[6:38](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=398) you know our data foundation is our data cloud mule soft tablo and informatica that's the core of our company and we're we have a huge amount of data ourselves in there but we also managed two and thirty petabytes of that information for our customers all over the world the second layer is the application foundation and some of these areas like support or sales are highly specialized applications and require you know incredible you know powerful user interfaces and by the way it's not that I don't have like a slack user interface for service and support or a slack user interface for sales but then you know I still have to branch out because all of a sudden I've got a lot more data I need to consume and humans are not going away we are working in partnership with these with these agents and that's how I look at it and then when it comes to slack like for example since I talked to you nine months ago I now have you know a couple dozen agents running inside slack on my behalf doing renewals you know doing support but also like doing my wellness benefits doing you know all kinds of interactions with my employees they operate inside the slack application you can see in the slack marketplace all kinds of new

[7:52](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=472) agentech apps and ISVs that are running inside there that's amazing so that is probably the most exciting most thriving ecosystem in tech for the enterprise right now is inside slack so I think we're really you have a good solid you know look at that every single day do you think this is maybe tied into my job in some ways but do you think I don't know what percentage you guys have of the CRM market I used Claude before this and it said 26% was the number I got and service now was 44% of ITSM or something one question we've been wrestling with is like do you think we're going to see just much more federation and like this generation of companies that are being founded right now might pick off a percentage point or two here or there and the market overall will grow and so it's you know arising tide for everyone but it's going to be really hard for net new businesses to have that level of penetration that you guys and service now and work day and whoever ever whoever else has been able to achieve well I hope you'll come to dream force and you'll see actually we have a we've never been in the ITSM market before so we're got entering and we're build it on slack you know so it's a slack first app it's agentic also so it's agentic it's slack first and

[9:11](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=551) I mean service now is a great company they you know I think they automate like 9,000 companies I don't know what the number is that they have but slack is out of million companies and those million companies they're you know small and medium and large and extra large just because all you know sales force sells to the five major segments of business that the I all of the IT world and slack is one of those products that we do that with and that idea that we're entering the market for ITSM but it's you know a whole different kind of architecture but it's the architecture that we're talking about which is we have to have humans at agents working together and that when we're you know managing you know our assets in our company or you know really kind of providing that kind of you know database to really understand the change configuration you know agentic capability is very powerful and then if you can provide it right on your phone in slack that's really a next generation UI and we're doing that with all of our products so all of our products so like our sales cloud which we've talked about you know for decades it's become an agentic sales our service cloud is agentic service even our marketing cloud where you know we do 11 trillion emails every single

[10:24](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=624) year those are all one way conversations today you know you're going to see a dream force those are all going to become two way conversations and it's because you're going to have an agentic on the end of that having a conversation with those customers and I'll tell you like even you know in my home I have an air-stream trailer outside and it's hooked on to the power grid you know with this device from a company called Eaton and they've been a customerverse for years they've done you know their sales and service on us but we have this field service product that we also now have made agentic and so when the field service agent from Eaton shows up not only are they like on their phone you can see the app by the way it's on the app store not only are they looking at all my information oh it's marked many off here's his home you know here's his air stream we got this working or I don't understand why this is not working he's not by himself he's with the agent he can interact with the agent and the user interface exactly is your kind of describing that kind of you know large language model interface and trying to figure out what's going to work what's not going to work and then all of that is going to get stored into the system of record so that

[11:28](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=688) when the next agent comes out it affects my you know power system again it's all right there in front of them because that's going to be the nature field service you know even like when we work with PG&E on their wildfire prevention they're out there with our field service app where they're looking at every powerful and every branch and every piece but they're not alone the agentic

[11:50](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=710) **Marc Benioff:** layer is with them it's humans and agents working together but the system of record the agentic layer the LLM all have to be integrated together you know it's that we talked about this actually nine

[12:02](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=722) months ago I remember the data layer the data foundation the application layer and the agentic layer are the three core layers of how applications are working going forward and that's well at least that's how I use them every single day and maybe you have a different way even when I'm using for example like last night I was shopping for ties so I was you know on an LLM and I'm looking for the right tie of this kind of thing it wasn't one of the two that you mentioned it was a different one and then it brings me in there it's kind of a super search you know it's like helping me search to find the website and then I'm getting now I'm on the website but I still had to go to the website to complete the transaction to identify you know who I was complete the commerce will that maybe get more refined it probably will but when it comes to the fundamental trust security and information sharing in an enterprise that is a different ballgame right there what is what is managing agents and managing workers in tail you guys have gone through this transition on the support side a little bit and increasingly maybe on the R&D and development side and now on the sales side is well I guess what how do you think about if you're a leader in trying to figure out

[13:14](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=794) how to deal with both the change management process associated with going through that but then also like how do you actually organize and design the business such that KPIs and accountability is actually roiling through the organization well we talked about that two nine months ago which was I really felt I was going to be the last CEO is only managing games remember that yes I do think and I still haven't come up with a better term of like managing agent workers or something for some reason that feels a little dystopian to me but it's it's clearly heading down that path in some way shape or form now I don't think it's dystopian at all I think that this is reality at least for me but I'm managing agents and humans and that means my agents when they show up to a customer like I told you of that sales person now that's calling back all my leads and that sales agent there has to be a certain kind of set of guardrails a certain personality a certain kind of tone the ability to know when it needs to escalate immediately to a human being because these large language models can do a lot of things but they cannot do everything and you know that so and that we're kind of hitting in some ways you know a high evolution of the large language model as we can kind of see as

[14:29](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=869) we got in a GPT five looks a lot like GPT four it's more evolutionary than revolutionary so we're seeing a maturation of that type of technology right now that deeply integrated into the tech into the application layer that's where I'm getting the most value and that idea that those agents then when they're directly talking to the customer or directly talking to the employee they need to be you know manage through those guardrails they need to be managed through that structure and that's incredibly important for us as the tech vendor to be able to provide that to the customer when you say 30 to 50% of work is being done by agents today I guess how do you think about the the unit of work being done how do you assess that at an organizational level to try to figure out where the balance is of who's doing what well I think we kind of lay it out like in that support example which is really I think the best example right that if we were having this conversation a year ago and you were calling Salesforce there would be 9,000 people that you would be interacting with globally on our service cloud and they would be managing creating reading updating deleting data we called CRUD database with an app of very powerful interface you know with lightning in some cases if there's a case maybe

[15:47](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=947) it gets swarmed on the slack but this is what they're doing maybe they're checking the analytics and Tableau maybe they're over here you know doing doing some others kind of sentiment analysis now it's a different system now all of a sudden here we are a year later and the

[16:05](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=965) **Marc Benioff:** million and a half conversations that are happening going forward over the next year and a million and a half human conversations that are going forward over the next year how now bifurcated 50% are with agents 50% are with humans and there needs to be also technology and people who are managing

[16:23](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=983) how are these working together and because all of a sudden like the agent will scale out and say whoa I can't handle this I need a you got to go help handle have the human work on that it's not any different than have you been like in your Tesla and all of a sudden itself driving it goes oh I don't actually know what's happening you take over and that's kind of the same thing but on a very complex you know you're working with a very complex customer you know in a support environment that is really the magic going forward you know how do we get these two and so that idea of the 50 50 I think that's definitely where we're going in sales in service in marketing in field service in the fundamental collaboration of our employees all of all of these pieces are going to have that kind of balance I don't know if you've reported since May on numbers related to this what I had down was 8,000 deals and generating over a hundred million in ARR for agent force I don't know if there's newer numbers out there if that's the latest well you'll you'll hear those when we do earnings next okay great okay so so earnings well wait and baited breath for that I assume they're higher than they were in the past what what was counterintuitive or as this has ramped up

[17:39](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1059) what's been unexpected in the response of actually seeing this out in the wild and in production well you can see that our AI and data product line is the fastest growing product line we've ever had it's you know the it's over a billion dollars now and all that is been a huge shock that we've been all the scale it is fast I mean we've seen the these great startup companies like Databricks and snowflake you know we've been investors in both of those companies we help bring snowflake public or investors and Databricks as well and you know and then you know we look at other companies that are doing data foundations or data foundries and others it's like wow this is a big category these companies are all like three to four billion dollars in revenue and now all

[18:19](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1099) **Marc Benioff:** of a sudden well we're a billion dollars and we're fast tracking the two billion in revenue on that product so that's very exciting I think that that idea that the data foundation product line

[18:32](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1112) that data cloud the you could even say agent force at some level though I wouldn't put it at that stratification mule soft which also provides the integration capabilities as well as in Formatica which you know as we've announced we're going to acquire as part of our data foundation and getting all of that working to really get our customers to harmonize all their data because if you don't have that data together you can't have the accuracy with the AI but this is really a huge category for customers and I think that this category will radically expand or it has been expanding will continue to expand for us and you guys not closed in Formatica yet these big regulators man it's uh it's crazy how long these deals take to close I guess you've never acquired a company for not at whatever your guys valuation is we've got quite a few acquisitions I think maybe more than 60 so I'll just tell you that you know we'll just let everyone work at their own pace yes yes I uh that's very diplomatic of you a lot of respect for everyone they're a lot of hard workers yes yes exactly I uh that's very diplomatic they talk about a place we could use of agents I guess um I guess one of the things we touched on last time that I'm very curious about

[19:42](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1182) is like the the per seat pricing which you guys were a pioneer in and then the shift the more agentic pricing I guess any updated observations thoughts perspectives on like what's going to be maybe cannibalistic as you don't need as many seats to do it but might increase overall dollars that a customer spends how do you think about that now with a little bit more data I've been on the road for two months with customers and so I'm just back now in my office so you know my view of that really continues to evolve which is of course we had per seat pricing we've always had consumption pricing also which is like we saw in our commerce cloud or even on email or our data cloud is consumption pricing per seat pricing is like the sales cloud the service cloud slack even see per seat pricing like on chat GPT the you mentioned or you know these kinds of products um so per seat pricing consumption pricing and then conversational pricing or this kind of idea that maybe you have a certain amount of conversations or certain kind of flex credits and one more category

[20:47](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1247) **Marc Benioff:** which is customers want kind of the ability to buy all of it is one big package way more aggressively than I realized they want kind of a complete uh agentic enterprise license agreement every

[20:59](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1259) company is really on a path to become an agentic enterprise I've articulated us as customer zero like I gave you the story now of service and sales or what I'm doing in Slack where I have a dozen agents and I'm renewing customers you know nine months ago I had no agents deployed in my company when we talked before you know now I have lots of agents and I think every company is going when they see what we've done and when you get to dream force and see my keynote I'm going to have a 12 fortune 100 companies there you know all showing you how to build an agentic enterprise different shapes and sizes different ways to do it ranging from visor to FedEx to OpenAI and thropic they're all going to be a dream force really showing customers how to do that that's October you know uh 14 through 16th in San Francisco and I think that will be a very critical thing that I don't just articulate hey here's our great new product here's like I said the new ITSM product or this new product or that new product but here is customers being successful becoming agentic enterprises last year we're just talking about agent force you know we've talked about that here's agent force you can deploy this go now we're saying no actually this is a huge enterprise

[22:12](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1332) transformation for you and in every category we're going to transform that function and we've had to rebuild every single one of our products to not only be the application layer where you're creating reading updating to leaving the data but also working hard hand in hand with the agents as well and that is I think really exciting I think for a lot of customers they haven't been able to see it yet and they want to see what other customers are doing and how to make it work and how to deploy it and that I think will be you know probably my greatest pleasure dream forces to see customers show other customers how they're doing you mentioned OpenAI and Anthropic there and we touched on a little bit of the scaling elements of the model today I'm sure you get to see a lot of stuff in preview or get to have conversations that a lot of people aren't privy to do you think we're increasingly moving to like an absorption and digestion phase where we just try to take a advantage of all the value that we've already presented or those model companies have already presented for enterprises to take advantage of or do you think we're still on a fairly steep slope and it's a little bit of ways from the harvesting stage it depends what category of the market we're

[23:28](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1408) talking about you know the market is really in five segments you have the small and medium business you know the you know call it a couple hundred employees you have the medium businesses call it a couple hundred to a few thousand employees you know you have the large businesses call them like four or five thousand employees then you of course have the very large fortune-wet in your businesses any of the government and these five segments of the market each need a slightly different version of the product they need something with a slightly UI they consume it a little differently and the speed of their deployment is different because their architectures are deployment are different and also AI is going to dramatically change you know small businesses there's going to be a radical explosion of the number of small businesses because AI is going to make entrepreneurs so much more you know capable and probably meaty business to and of course in large business like mine it's happening but you know not everyone is probably as committed to deploying the technology rapidly and at the bleeding edge as I am so those five segments will all adopt the technology slightly differently and that's my observation of technology over 40 years

[24:38](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1478) and so where do you think we are on that do you think we're at the absorption stage for for the mainstream enterprises or we're at the beginning of the beginning a lot of for big enterprises let's call them the big extra large enterprises you know they've a lot of them have tried things out some of the like in the dream force keynote Pfizer will be there they've deployed agent force to 20,000 you know their sales professionals they use our life sciences cloud which is now also a genetic that idea that we're able to kind of you know work with a company like that to kind of give them much more capability for their professionals that they're they're they're it's a force multiplier you know for their employees that is very powerful and for their customers as well and other customers need to see that in the pharmaceutical industry it's a great example you know it's a variation of companies who are willing to try technology to companies like Pfizer who are always the leaders in deploying that technology so you know I'm called the Albert Borla's CO Pfizer please come be part of my keynote that's very important for me because they're pioneers they're really doing an incredible job you know really delivering this next generation of AI one of the things

[25:51](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1551) we're seeing in the private markets for startups I guess is this it may be a overused terminology but but adopting some of the nomenclature from the Palantir world of like forward deployed engineering which I think is being purpose felt purpose fit a little bit differently than what Palantir intends it to be and maybe it's a little bit more of I saw someone call it sparkling sales engineering or something versus in the past but I guess do you are you seeing more consultative relationships with customers that are helping or that are looking to you to help them more map the journey than you have in the past and therefore it is that required like different staffing or different utilization of resources internally I'm very inspired by Palantir you know they sell and they sell in parts of the market that I have not traditionally sold and they also sell at prices that I've never seen and our price offer being sold at so I've very inspired by and they try and broker goals that you know rarely are seen as well right yeah and I mean yes the the federal US federal government sales force is largest customer and you know we run all the major you know civilian agencies like the veterans administration all is fully automated

[27:06](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1626) on salesperson and I would say that now you know when we look you know certain parts of the government we haven't sold into but in some areas you know we are you know selling in and the US army we just beat you know Palantir it's a public it was publicly announced you know on on a new

[27:25](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1645) **Marc Benioff:** deployment and I would say that we're going to do that because our prices are so much better at lower cost and our technology is probably so much easier to use deploy but when it comes to

[27:35](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1655) forward deployed engineers this idea that we had salespeople and system engineers on the front lines that was always true we had professional services that was always true but early deployment engineers are for deployed engineers where you're starting to build the application before the deal is signed that isn't something you know that we've really ever done before I find that very inspiring and I'm definitely you know trying that out and seeing if that will help me you know accelerate you know customer acquisition I think it's a really cool idea and I'm very inspired not just by you know the hundred times revenue multiple that's inspiring to know that's inspired yeah but I'm also I'm inspired look you know I've been a four million dollar company a 40 million dollar company a 400 million dollar company I've also been a four billion dollar company like Palantir and now I'm a 41 billion dollar company so I've been all of those stages and each stage is a little bit different but I can be inspired by everyone and anyone are there are there unique pockets that you think are advantaged to be a startup these days versus in an incumbent in the in the market and you would say hey here's the opportunity for investment that might exist

[28:47](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1727) outside of the core advantages that incumbency has well I mean sales force has been a very active investor you know we run our sales force ventures you know we own 1% of them thropic we just were part of selling whiz to Google you know which was a huge you know outcome for us I think more than a billion dollars and you know we tell we we took snow plate public that was more than a billion a billion and a half both of those I think were billion and a half I would say that I don't know what the IR exactly is in sales force ventures I think it's like 33% something like that when we're looking at these companies today and I just met with two entrepreneurs myself yesterday they're both 18 years old they're both like obidator they're both building on and thropic cloud they're both addicted to it because and thropic gave them 30 thousand dollars of free credits they're using their new Harmony API they're doing all of these things and I'm like whoa innovation is alive and well and Silicon Valley at every time you hear that's you know San Francisco is dead or something I'm like don't worry another gold rush is coming and then people never will go oh mark you don't know what you're talking about and oh yeah here we are it's a gold rush and

[29:56](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1796) look at people are coming in from all over the world with their pans and their shovels and their picks and their got their blue jeans and their panting and I would say that it's a very exciting moment where you can see all these new technologies new ideas incredible innovation and things are moving fast and as evidence that I'm going to go back and watch what we said nine months ago and see how much of it has iterated evolved and changed and how much we've actually been able to get done because usually it's not these enterprise deployments are not done Logan in nine months you know it's like whoa I've got this oh yeah hey Logan I got this is my actual results here's the KPIs here we go and that's why I'm super motivated and excited I'm super energized and you know when you get to dream force this needs to be like a big message that I have which is hey you need to become an agentic enterprise here's the products every app is now agentic here's the data foundation here's all these pieces but I don't think customers care that much about what I have to say about the new products I think what they want to know is hey what did that person do what did FedEx did this and here's you know the CO FedEx explaining exactly what they

[31:13](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1873) did here you know OpenAI did this and this is exactly how they did it and that I think is cool and that I think is another level of kind of capability that we have to be able to show and I'm going to pivot you know how I present my keynote based on that feeling I have which is that you know these customers like I'm built these big customers in Europe and they're like well I want to become an agentic enterprise these are customers that I've had for like one or two decades now I'm like hey we're going to move your whole infrastructure forward rebalance your head count the way I'm rebalancing mine change your business KPIs and you're going to come out the other side as an agentic enterprise. We kind of touched on it there and also when you were talking about the startups of the young kids going through why see these days but it does seem as a private investor there is a different rhythm or cadence that it seems the AI first companies are operating under and I think to some extent when your world around you is changing so quickly it forces an internal culture of change to be much more material in a meaningful way than like more traditional businesses I guess outside of adopting agent force in mass and you know all the good stuff that you guys

[32:29](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=1949) bring to bear up and down the stack are there are there things you've learned about how to change the speed of of moving a bigger organization that's gone through changes in the past but now has to operate at the speed of the competitors that were founded in the last couple years. Yeah I mean before talking to you I actually spoke you know to a company that I helped start in the AI world Richard Socher used to run Salesforce research you know has this incredible company called View.com and it's an AI first search company it's amazing it's scaling incredibly well it's just does incredibly accurate search based capability you probably have it on your phone if you don't it's pretty awesome they also provide an API approach which is widely consumed by some credible companies gives them a search infrastructure you know powerful and another example is I have another company called Artera which is an AI first company and that company is doing prostate cancer diagnostics got just got an FDA clearance it's about to do breast cancers do other ones and these are in my private venture portfolio you know which is time ventures so when I look at what Salesforce is doing what I'm looking I'm doing I would just say it's very similar you know

[33:48](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2028) you have a great entrepreneur you know so you have Andre Esteva who's running Artera you have Richard Socher is running you.com they're visionaries they're experts by the way both of them use tour both of them are in Salesforce both of these to work together in the AI world they have a clear vision of what they're trying to accomplish one is doing you know next generation search through an API the other one is you know trying to provide democratizing high quality healthcare globally through AI it's leadership it's vision you know what do you really want what is your outcome where are you totally passionate and totally focused about what you're doing nothing is going to replace that and then the core values that they're building their companies on you know is it about trust is it about customer success is it about a vision and innovation I would say that when you're running something like how Andre's running which is you're in like the most sensitive aspects of somebody's life you know which is their cancer diagnosis I would say that that's something where all of a sudden you know you better have be completely buttoned up as a company and have the highest level of trust and capability and so your values matter so your vision matters your values

[35:06](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2106) and then your execution matters the quality of your team matters how you are actually making things happen day-to-day matters and also are you rapidly resolving obstacles and what are your KPIs are you scaling your revenue both of those companies are scaling their revenue really aggressively like you need to scale your revenue and go because others will come for you well this has always been true and you know I've been in Silicon Valley my whole life I was born in San Francisco I grew up in the peninsula in Hillsborough my whole life has been in Silicon Valley and all the great entrepreneurs and all the great venture capitalists have proceeded us you know from the air of Arthur Rock and Sandy Robertson was one of my mentors you know to the great investors and entrepreneurs of today you know they have more things in common than different and one of them is you know you better go and you better go faster and you better go now I guess as we wrap one thing that I get asked a lot and I'm curious your perspective on this is like if you're a young person if you're 22 years old graduating college or whatever interested in entering a field in some way shape or form and AIs changing so much eight years ago I would have said just go get five years ago I would

[36:25](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2185) say go get a CS degree and you know that'll benefit you no matter what you go do and now I'm not sure my council would be the would be the same anything you would give to someone that's maybe in the early part of their career and trying to figure out absolutely oh I told you I just met with this cool startup that's NYC with these two 18 year old founders you know that is amazing and and then I have two to interns from Stanford working in my office for the summer and hey create value create value and deliver deliver or something different and create something amazing and these kids I don't know you know these kids they're they're AI natives they're authentic natives they're not digital natives you know like they are they know intuitively what's possible and where this can go and then they're looking at my business process my product lines my capabilities and say and actually here's your gap and this is what can get filled in so that's very powerful and we need these people and I breathing these studies well we're not sure if we're going to hire these kids from college I mean what a mistake for companies not hiring people from college or bringing in new talents or bringing people in at that age I mean that is where the real value

[37:45](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2265) and the insights and the energy is going to come from I guess one last one before we hop so you've been the CEO now sales force for 25 26 years you've seen every cycle that at least in my lifetime from dot com to mobile the cloud AI do you have a contrarium bet that maybe people look believe about AI today that we're going to look back on in five years and it's just going to be patently false well I think that there's you know unfortunately we have this kind of clarinet you know I would say reality distortion field that could create it around the time we've talked about a year ago we're all of a sudden the sea of carna seems like a very new sky I've never met I've had one I'd seem wonderful but his messages changed like 10 times and 10 months and the stuff that he said was truly he's kind of walked back is not true I see on the other side there's people in my industry even some of my peers to talk about the end of apps or the end of crud day you know that enterprise apps are just crud databases it's like whoa I I just think that there's a lot of kind of crazy things I mean I think even some of the talk about AGI may be a two augmented that you know these large language models are really amazing but they're not AGI and I

[39:09](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2349) **Marc Benioff:** was like this this weekend I was like figuring out how might communicate this to people because we forget these large language models these are relatively finite algorithm sets with regular relatively finite data sets and those two things provide you some functionality but not all functionality

[39:28](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2368) and as evidence of that there's this really cool medical study now that our brains start to create immune cells when we're near sick people and as jokie dot twitter well I kind of missed that feature you know gpt 5 I don't think it does that quite yet so we still have an advantage but I think at some level because you're talking about these finite algorithms and finite data sets which is kind of what all the AI is built on these the same data set these LLMs which is why they're all kind of seems like they're hitting this upper limit where you can see like gtp 3 or 4 might have been more revolutionary maybe gtp 5 is more evolutionary you know that there's still some cool things happening but it's not these big transformational leaps I think that we could kind of then make a statement of you know where we're going to need another set of models and another set of capabilities before we get that next set and that when you're dealing in the finite like the finite data and the finite algorithms we're infinite you know we're infinite beings we have the ability to have a level creativity and inspiration and insights that's beyond that that's why that example of like hey we're creating an immune we have an immune system you know we're creating immune cells we

[40:47](https://realalpha.app/v/0RkNkGihrvc/?t=2447) don't even realize we're creating immune cells we're tapped it into a level of energy and capability that's beyond the finite data set so I think we have to keep that you know front of mind that we I think we still are an important part of this world that we're in it's an optimistic note in on mark thank you for doing this it's great to see you again Logan I hope you're coming to dream force I now that I'm invited I I was waiting to be invited I I'm happy to have you and it's going to be awesome you're going to love it and do you like Metallica or do you like Benson Boone it seems like it's maybe it's interesting I guess if those are the two extremes I would put myself in Metallica I thought yeah I thought so yeah well there's a whole group of folks who are Benson Boone people we're got both and baby Stevie Wonder might make an appearance you're going to do the Benson Boone outfit I hear big CEOs dress up I would not be oh and I will not be doing the back clip either but I do like the music but I of course a Lars I clip very close with as you know yeah Metallica does a lot with Salesforce so we love working with them now okay I will see you a dream force great to see you Mark it's great to see you again