Marc Benioff’s Bold Bet: AI as a Partner, Not a Threat

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has joined the growing list of technology chiefs highlighting the increasing presence of AI in the workplace. In a recent interview, Benioff said that artificial intelligence already handles 30% to 50% of Salesforce's internal tasks—meriting a seismic transformation of the company's modus operandi.

 

Key Highlights:

 

Benioff referred to the shift as a "digital labor revolution," with artificial intelligence at the helm for software coding, customer support, and marketing. He explained that this enables human employees to perform more value-added tasks.

Agent Force, the company's AI platform, is leading the charge. It enables both customers and users of Salesforce to leverage self-service agents for activities like lead qualification and troubleshooting. Over 5,000 customers, including Disney, already utilize it.

Benioff claimed these AI agents are already 93% accurate in customer interactions and projected active agents would reach a billion by the end of 2025.

Internally, the application of AI led to job loss, with over 1,000 jobs lost since January 2024. Although some employees were redeployed, others were laid off as automation took care of repetitive tasks.

Even as it lays off people, Salesforce is hiring additional sales reps to sell its AI products. Benioff even joked that AI may even replace him one day—"partially kidding," he added.

 

Salesforce's upgrade is part of a bigger movement in Silicon Valley, where AI is no longer seen as a tool—it's becoming the workforce.

 

Sources: Bloomberg, YourStory, Economic Times