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Wall Street believes AI will destroy his business, but Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, begs to differ. Sure, Salesforce stock is down 28% this year on fears that AI agents will replace the software-as-a-service model that made the company a giant. The worst-hit SaaS companies have plummeted twice that much on the same “SaaSpocalypse” thesis: Why pay per employee for software when AI can do the work with fewer people?

Benioff thinks the bears have it completely wrong, he told the Wall Street Journal. He says that AI isn’t killing Salesforce — it’s making it more valuable. The company invested over $300 million in Anthropic starting in early 2023, and by year-end plans to unveil Agent Albert, a new AI platform that automatically studies users and takes actions on their behalf. Its earlier product, Agentforce, is already used by 23,000 customers to build autonomous agents for workflows.

The pitch? Customers can’t easily build their own sales software that competes on security, compliance and industry-specific features. And leading AI labs would rather partner with Salesforce than replace it. As Benioff puts it: “People think we have our back against the wall when in fact the opportunity has never been greater.”

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