Salesforce's $60 Billion AI-Driven Vision: Reshaping Enterprise Operations with Agentforce

Salesforce bets on $60B automated future by 2030

CRM messiah preaches data discipline while rivals chase LLM miracles Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has warned investors to beware "false prophets" peddling AI salvation, as the CRM giant bets on its "agentic enterprise" vision to drive annual revenue past $60 billion by 2030. The topline prediction came as the SaaS biz reported Q2 [PDF] financial reaults for the three months ended July 31, with revenue up 10 percent year-on-year to $10.2 billion and net profit jumping 32 percent to $1.89 billion. Cloud and AI subscriptions were the standouts, with annual recurring revenue topping $1.2 billion - up 120 percent on last year. Salesforce also handed $2.6 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. For Q3, sales are forecast to be between $10.24 billion and $10.29 billion, up eight to nine percent. Annual revenue is projected to smash through $60 billion by 2030, fueled by the corporation's growing stable of AI and data-driven services. "We're confident we can deliver more than $60 billion in revenue by 2030," Benioff told analysts, calling the goal "a new chapter for Salesforce" as it morphs from cloud CRM vendor to what he described as a "digital labor platform." The target excludes the pending $8 billion acquisition of data integration specialist Informatica, which will deepen Salesforce's data governance stack and feed its AI pipeline. Benioff reserved his sharpest words for the hype surrounding generative AI. "There's a lot of folks trying to be prophetic," he said during the investor Q&A. "Some of them are prophets and some of them are false prophets. It's going to be up to you to separate the wheat from the chaff." His warning was aimed at rivals rushing to bolt large language models onto enterprise software. Salesforce insists its Agentforce system - the core of what executives call the "agentic enterprise" - connects those models directly to trusted corporate data and workflows instead of letting them drift unmoored in the cloud. Chief product officer Steve Fisher told investors that Salesforce spent the past four years re-architecting its core platform to unify data, analytics, and automation around what is now branded Data 360. That, he said, allows companies to create "agents" able to act across sales, service, and marketing systems rather than just generate text. "The LLM by itself isn't particularly useful for business," Fisher said. "It needs to be connected to the data, to the systems, so it can take action... It's about the humans and the agents working together." Those agents are already being used inside Salesforce itself. The company's internal sales bots have made more than 100,000 calls to prospective customers, Benioff said, claiming they've helped close "hundreds of deals." Chief revenue officer Miguel Milano added that more than 10,000 customers are now paying for Agentforce and Data 360 services, and that uptake has been strongest among smaller firms. "Every customer wants to become an agentic enterprise," he said. "They want to grow the top line, drive productivity, reduce cost, and empower employees. Now they know AI is going to enable that." Benioff noted that government customers remain relatively slow adopters: "The government will, of course, come kind of at the end of the technology-adoption curve." For now, Salesforce's AI narrative is helping offset slowing growth in its traditional CRM products. About 40 percent of bookings for Agentforce and Data 360 in the last quarter came from existing customers expanding usage rather than new sign-ups, a pattern Benioff framed as proof that the company's longstanding base is buying into its AI overhaul. Still, the scale of the $60 billion promise leaves little room for error, and Salesforce must show that its "agentic" concept can generate sustainable margins rather than one-off excitement. Benioff sounded convinced the bet will pay off. "We're not having to take back a lot of the things we've said over the last three years," he told investors. "We've been mostly on point and accurate in predicting the future... we've put A and B and C, and now we're going to deliver D."

Government AI action plan boosted by Salesforce's Agentforce - SiliconANGLE

Governments worldwide face mounting pressure to improve the speed, accuracy and personalization of public services. A structured government AI action plan can help agencies meet this challenge by supporting predictive insights, faster decisions and more responsive citizen engagement. Salesforce Inc.'s Agentforce platform aims to accelerate these goals by automating routine tasks, improving service delivery and enabling AI-powered agents to manage citizen inquiries, code enforcement and benefits applications, according to Paul Tatum (pictured), executive vice president of global public sector solutions at Salesforce. "What we saw here in the United States with this administration is the AI action plan that came out a few months ago," Tatum said. "I think if you look at where AI is going, where Salesforce and Agentforce is going, like the government could use some help in this space of citizen services, engaging responsiveness. The nice thing about the government is they are very responsible with our data. They are careful and they do have standards and compliance and security requirements that we have to abide by at Salesforce as a company." Tatum spoke with theCUBE's Gemma Allen and George Gilbert at Dreamforce, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. The conversation explored the goals of a government AI action plan and how Agentforce fits into that evolving vision (* Disclosure below.) Balancing risk aversion with innovation is essential to making a government AI action plan both responsible and effective. By reframing caution as a strategic advantage, public agencies can adopt AI in ways that safeguard citizens while accelerating transformation, according to Tatum. "What you're seeing is governments ultimately are pretty risk averse," he said. "Its a bold statement for the United States as a country to say, 'Listen, we need to really, really double down on AI at the infrastructure level, at the chip level, at the enterprise software level. By the way, as government organizations, we need to do more with AI.' Today, every [request for proposal], every RFI that comes out of the government has an AI component. You must deliver this particular capability, and there has to be AI capacity and capability within it." Government requests for proposals and requests for information increasingly demand AI capabilities as this cutting-edge technology becomes vital to enhancing efficiency, transparency and decision-making in the public sector. This shift reflects the drive to modernize public services amid rapid technological change, moving beyond digitization to intelligent transformation, Tatum pointed out. "The government is in the process of going from, 'Let's play with it, let's kind of see what it is,' he said. "What that is showing up in these [requests for information], RFPs is 'Let's go build the new systems.' It is taking what is frankly mountains of a workload, overworked great civil servants, and trying to augment their work and help them. If you were to go to the CMS.gov website or IRS.gov and hit the help button, there are over 200 URLs. The day will come where there will be an agentic helper on that webpage." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE's coverage of Dreamforce:

Salesforce Expands AWS Partnership, Targets $60 Billion Revenue by 2030

The partnership will expand integrations across various AWS offerings, allowing businesses to deploy secure AI agents efficiently. Salesforce has reinforced its long-standing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on October 16, unveiling a new phase of collaboration centred on accelerating the rise of "agentic enterprises." These are businesses powered by interoperable AI agents capable of transforming customer operations, the company announced. The announcement comes as Salesforce separately outlined its bold financial ambition to surpass $60 billion in revenue by fiscal year 2030, signalling confidence in AI-led growth and long-term profitability. In their latest joint initiative, Salesforce and AWS are expanding integrations across Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Connect, and Data 360 to help enterprises deploy secure, multi-vendor AI agents at scale. AI systems using standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) streamline functions such as customer service and data collaboration. "This next phase of the Salesforce and AWS partnership is about helping businesses continue to evolve into agentic enterprises where every company operates with infinite capacity, precision, and speed by pairing human expertise with AI-powered agents," said Brian Landsman, CEO of AppExchange and Global Partnerships. Central to the partnership is Salesforce's Zero Copy architecture, allowing customers to access data stored on AWS, such as in Amazon Redshift, without duplication. This not only reduces operational complexity but also ensures that AI agents can draw on real-time, trusted information. Joint innovations like Data 360 Clean Rooms, integrating directly with AWS Clean Rooms, further enable privacy-preserving data collaboration between multiple parties. While Salesforce and AWS push the technological frontier, the company's financial targets underscore its commercial momentum. During Investor Day at Dreamforce, Salesforce announced a revised long-term revenue target of over $60 billion by FY2030, underpinned by a 10%+ organic CAGR from FY26 to FY30. Its AI and data businesses are surging, with Data and AI offerings generating $1.2 billion in Q2 and Agentforce, the company's AI agent platform, reaching approximately $440 million in annual recurring revenue. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said, "We are leading the era of the Agentic Enterprise," positioning Agentforce as Salesforce's fastest-growing organic product, adopted by more than 12,000 customers. Together, the renewed AWS alliance and aggressive financial roadmap reflect Salesforce's ambition to embed AI agents at the heart of enterprise operations while delivering sustained, profitable growth.

AI adoption surges as Salesforce redefines its platform focus - SiliconANGLE

From demos to dollars: Analysts on AI adoption and Salesforce's strategy The enterprise conversation around AI adoption is shifting from flashy demos to deployment at scale. While agent-based applications and infrastructure still draw buzz, a deeper theme is emerging: The need for agent supervision, observability and orchestration. This year's Dreamforce event captured that shift by showcasing how companies like Dell Technologies Inc., FedEx Corp. and PepsiCo Inc. are putting Salesforce Inc.'s agent technology to work. The spotlight has moved to real-world outcomes -- agentic apps helping small retailers manage inventory, AI assistants boosting support volume without adding headcount, and measurable progress toward observability and orchestration, according to Crawford Del Prete (pictured), president of International Data Corp. "I've never seen a technology that's moving faster," he said. "People used to talk about cloud. That's where you put the crappy apps at the beginning. That's not where we are right now. Customers are running to this technology; they're engaging. They were a little bit cynical, but I think Salesforce has made... my key takeaway is a credible take at how to make customers successful in this journey." During Dreamforce, Del Prete was joined by Sarbjeet Johal, founder and chief executive officer of Stackpane, in an AnalystANGLE segment with theCUBE hosts Dave Vellante and George Gilbert. During an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio, the analysts explored Salesforce's platform challenges, the booming AI adoption trend and the ongoing quest for real business value. (* Disclosure below.) AI adoption is fueling record growth across the tech sector, prompting IDC to raise its annual IT forecast, according to Del Prete. The surge is being driven by massive infrastructure buildouts, with enterprise IT spending climbing into double digits and some AI software segments spiking dramatically. "We're looking at about 14% growth this year, and that's up from earlier in the year when we were expecting somewhere around 9 to 10% growth," Del Prete said. "Now, that's being fueled by a few areas. Obviously, it's the infrastructure build-out, it's enterprise IT ... If you just look at servers ... and we've seen that number be in excess of 50% on a quarterly basis this year, so we're seeing extremely strong enterprise IT growth." As the AI market expands, Salesforce faces a growing identity dilemma, according to Johal: Is it a platform provider or an applications company? Its emphasis on abstraction and low-code tools doesn't always resonate with large enterprises or developer-heavy customers. To win over Fortune 500 firms -- many of which operate like independent software vendors -- Salesforce must highlight its core platform capabilities. "They want to be a platform, but actually, the way they come out is a lot of abstraction on top of platforms," Johal explained. "You still need that core platform which ISVs can use -- and if you notice, the bigger customers work like ISVs, they have big budgets on the IT side, and they can hire thousands of developers, and they cook up their own stuff. To appeal to the bigger Fortune 500s, I think you need to highlight the platform side of things." Despite surging investment, many enterprises still approach AI adoption as a cost-cutting tool rather than a growth driver -- a pattern that may undermine long-term returns. An upcoming IDC survey shows only 11% of organizations say most of their AI projects are delivering measurable business value, according to Del Prete. "The magic happens when you can unlock revenue growth while you're reducing costs," he said. "Dell's doing it on the back of the AI build-out ... and today, what I'm seeing, what's troubling, is too many companies are only focused on the expense side of the equation with AI, and that's where I think Salesforce has an asset because they, through their [customer relationship management], can figure out the use case around making your leads better, warming up [and] training your Salesforce ... in a new way. And they can unlock that message and use AI to drive growth." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE's coverage of Dreamforce:

Reshaping ops with agent-based systems at Salesforce - SiliconANGLE

Business models don't evolve by accident. At Salesforce Inc., operational discipline and strategic clarity are shaping a new chapter driven by automation and agent-based systems. Customer demand for intelligent automation is converging with Salesforce's internal push to scale its operating model. That includes helping customers apply agent-based systems to tackle complex problems and unlock measurable business value, according to Robin Washington (pictured), president and chief operating and financial officer of Salesforce. The goal: Driving growth, improving customer outcomes and strengthening Salesforce's own operating model in the process. "We really see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the agentic enterprise to really accelerate our customers' adoption of AI, which will fuel our growth and improve our customers' success," Washington told theCUBE. "We want to help our customers leveraging technology solve their greatest problems." Washington talked with theCUBE's Dave Vellante and George Gilbert at Dreamforce during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed AI adoption, operational excellence, enterprise strategy and customer value models. (Disclosure below.) As both a COO and CFO, Washington helps define how Salesforce invests for long-term enterprise scale. One key benchmark is the company's "50 by FY30" goal -- a framework that blends growth and margin targets with a focus on service-driven revenue and operational efficiency, according to Washington. "We call it 50 by FY30, and it's a combination of our service and support revenue percentage and our non-[generally accepted accounting principles] operating margin percentage," she said. "That is our definition. We want our sales growth to grow. We want to be more profitable, so we want our GAAPs' operating margin to grow, as well." Integration of agent-based systems such as Agentforce 360 and Data 360 are accelerating across Salesforce's multi-cloud customers. These systems are driving measurable improvements in engagement, retention and annual recurring revenue, according to Washington. "If we can truly make customers end-to-end agentic on Agentforce, that will expand their usage of all of our clouds. It will improve their performance, and it could be a three-to-four times increase in ARR for those customers. That's our belief." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE's coverage of Dreamforce:

Salesforce's Dreamforce 2025: Channel Takeaways Involving Agentic AI, SaaS

'I really think this is the next revolution,' Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff says. General availability for Salesforce Agentforce 360. A new goal of $60 billion in revenue by the 2030 fiscal year. And more ways to pay for artificial intelligence. San Francisco-based customer relationship management (CRM) software giant Salesforce made plenty of announcements this week as part of its annual Dreamforce conference, with some of the news shedding more light for solution providers not only on how the vendor's own AI products are growing, but on the trends Salesforce sees in customer demand for AI and how the technology is evolving software-as-a-services (SaaS). Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff said in his keynote address at the conference that his company will play a major role in turning companies into agentic enterprises, bridging an agentic divide where consumer AI is bringing everyday people more power than enterprises. "I really think this is the next revolution-we've gone through cloud, we've gone through mobile, we've gone through social, we've gone through predictive AI," Benioff said. "Now we're entering this new agentic AI revolution." [RELATED: Salesforce Launches Agentforce IT Service, Opening New Doors For Partners] Michael Utell, chief commercial officer for the Salesforce practice at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Bridgenext-No. 213 on CRN's 2025 Solution Provider 500-told CRN in an interview that much of his team's work has been helping clients understand Agentforce and all it can bring by putting clients on the path to becoming agentic enterprises. The solution provider has been building a unique practice that is a mix of managing Salesforce for enterprises and its product development side, Utell said. Many clients still need traditional data cleanup work to get the most out of the vendor's AI wares. Bridgenext "is trying to help our clients not just implement Salesforce-there's a lot of fish in the sea that go and implement Salesforce-but truly understand why they are implementing and what return they're getting," Utell said. The many Agentforce capabilities still in development and the transparency on Salesforce's growth plans over the next year-and-a-half reflect some near-term challenges for the vendor, William Blair said in a report Thursday. However, the investment firm still saw Salesforce as well-positioned in the medium and long term for bringing generative AI to enterprises. As a holder of much of enterprise data, Salesforce tools present a strong case for being the leaders in delivering AI agents, Bernstein said in a Thursday report. That evolution is important with AI threatening the traditional per-seat pricing model of Salesforce's biggest product, Service Cloud, and as the largest technology vendors and smallest startups threaten Salesforce in not only AI, but its traditional customer relationship management (CRM) market. Salesforce is also trying to break into new markets, most notably the IT service space dominated by players such as ServiceNow. Bernstein predicted more difficulty for Salesforce becoming an AI force in newer markets where it has less data, context and expertise, instead using its existing data and context to drive AI adoption in its core markets. Here's more of what the channel can take away from Salesforce's news around Agentforce 360 and monetizing agentic AI.

Salesforce Gains On Strong AI Momentum, Agentforce Expansion & Expanded Google Partnership Salesforce Benefits From AI Momentum & Expanded Google Partnership - Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) stock gained on Thursday after it set a new long-term revenue target of over $60 billion by fiscal year 2030, excluding Informatica, signaling a 10%+ organic CAGR from fiscal 2026 to fiscal 2030. The company also introduced its Profitable Growth Framework, "50 by fiscal 2030," aiming for the sum of constant-currency subscription and support growth, as well as an adjusted operating margin, to reach 50% by fiscal 2030. At its Investor Day during Dreamforce, Salesforce outlined a plan to sustain double-digit revenue growth through the Profitable Growth Framework, product innovation, and an optimized go-to-market model that scales sales efficiently and reimagines customer success to boost consumption and Net New Average Order Value (AOV). Also Read: Salesforce Strikes $8 Billion Acquisition To Boost AI And Data Cloud Power Salesforce highlighted strong momentum in its Data and AI offerings, which reached $1.2 billion in the second quarter, up 120% year-over-year. Combined with Agentforce, its total agentic AI annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the second quarter hit approximately $440 million, serving more than 12,000 customers across industries. The company sees a potential 3-to 4-fold ARR uplift for customers who expand their use of agentic AI across their operations. Salesforce and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google expanded their strategic partnership to bring Google's Gemini AI models into Salesforce's new Agentforce 360 Platform. The collaboration integrates Agentforce 360 with Google Workspace for sales and IT service, extending the existing Gemini integration in Gmail to more Workspace tools. The partnership allows customers to use Gemini models to power Salesforce's Atlas Reasoning Engine. Salesforce stock tanked over 29% year-to-date. Analysts see Salesforce's second-quarter results as strong but tempered by cautious guidance. Needham's Scott Berg noted the company beat expectations on revenue and earnings but highlighted muted near-term guidance, while pointing to a 20% increase in sales headcount as a potential driver of future bookings. Canaccord Genuity's David Hynes called the quarter "steady, not spectacular," citing 9% constant-currency revenue growth and timing-related license recognition, yet he emphasized 120% year-over-year growth in Data Cloud and Agentforce ARR. Price Action: CRM stock is trading higher by 6.75% to $252.55 premarket at last check on Thursday. CRMSalesforce Inc $255.518.00% Overview GOOGLAlphabet Inc $254.541.40% Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Salesforce Is Betting on the Era of the Agentic Enterprise. Is the Stock a Buy Now? | The Motley Fool

A long-term plan centered on agentic artificial intelligence (AI) could reset expectations for Salesforce if growth and margins stay on track. Shares of Salesforce (CRM -1.19%) moved higher this week after management used its annual Dreamforce conference to reset long-term expectations. The customer relationship management (CRM) specialist now targets at least $60 billion of revenue by fiscal 2030, excluding any contributions from its recent acquisition of Informatica. In addition, the company introduced a profitability yardstick that pairs growth and margins. The broader theme in Salesforce's upbeat outlook is the agentic enterprise, where AI (artificial intelligence) agents handle work across sales, service, marketing, and data. Salesforce is best known for CRM software, but its platform spans marketing automation, analytics, integration, collaboration, and data management. That breadth matters for AI because unified data and workflows make it easier to deploy agents that do real tasks. This helps explain why the company is seeing explosive growth in its data and AI offering, and why Salesforce expects enterprise adoption of agentic tools to help the company maintain double-digit organic revenue growth through the end of fiscal 2030. Salesforce aims for at least $60 billion of revenue by fiscal 2030, which implies a 10% or higher organic compound growth rate between fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2030. Management also introduced a target it is calling "50 by FY30," in which the company expects the sum of its subscription and support constant-currency revenue growth rate and non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) operating margin to equal 50 by the end of fiscal 2030. To help investors have confidence in Salesforce's ambitious expectations, management noted that its data and AI annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached about $1.2 billion in the second quarter and grew about 120% year over year. Management also disclosed about $440 million in agentic AI ARR and stated that more than 12,000 customers have already adopted Agentforce. "We're leading the next great transformation in business -- the era of the Agentic Enterprise," CEO Marc Benioff said in a press release about the targets it disclosed at its Investor Day event at Dreamforce, calling Agentforce the company's "fastest-growing organic product ever." Salesforce chief financial and operating officer Robin Washington said its Agentforce platform was built as a result of more than $10 billion of focused research and development since the start of fiscal 2024. In the meantime, Salesforce is already putting up good numbers. Revenue in its fiscal second quarter rose 10% year over year to about $10.2 billion, and subscription and support revenue grew 11%. Current remaining performance obligations (future revenue under contract expected to be recognized as revenue in the next 12 months) increased 11%. Notably, the company also raised its full-year revenue guidance to between $41.1 billion and $41.3 billion (8% to 9% growth). Additionally, it raised its guidance for non-GAAP operating margin to 34.1%. But is the stock too expensive? Trading at 36 times earnings as of this writing, shares certainly aren't cheap. But the valuation isn't extreme for a software platform with a non-GAAP operating margin in the mid-thirties and clear levers to lift growth as AI adoption broadens. Salesforce's success depends on continued rapid customer adoption of AI agents while protecting its margins -- even as the company continues to invest aggressively in the technology needed to grow this business. Additionally, investors should keep an eye on the macroeconomic environment and how it impacts adoption. An uncertain environment could stretch sales cycles and slow customer expansion within the Salesforce ecosystem of software and services. Finally, the "50 by FY30" yardstick is simple and trackable (which is helpful), but it also raises the bar and ultimately will make any slippage obvious. Ultimately, the stock looks interesting at its current price, but isn't a clear buy -- not because the company doesn't have a lot going for it, but because of its premium valuation. Still, for investors seeking exposure to enterprise AI, a very small position could make sense. Investors could always add to the position on any pullbacks in the stock, assuming the company is executing well.

Salesforce and AWS Accelerate AI Transformation for Agentic Enterprises

As Salesforce and AWS approach a decade of collaboration, the focus remains on innovating for shared customers -- like Deel, Expedia Group, Toyota Motor North America, and 1-800Accountant -- by making it easier, safer, and faster for them to harness these powerful technologies without compromising security or trust. With AI agents, we're witnessing the most transformative development in technology since the creation of the internet. Salesforce's Agentic Enterprise Index revealed that in just the first half of 2025, the number of agents created and deployed by businesses jumped 119%, employee interaction with agents grew 65% month over month, and conversations stretched 35% longer -- signaling agentic systems are becoming indispensable in the workplace.

Salesforce Reinvents Enterprise Software Model With AI and $7B Buyback Plan | Investing.com UK

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has reasserted its leadership in enterprise software with a quarter that underscored the company's rapid evolution into an AI-driven cloud powerhouse. Amid a challenging enterprise IT environment, Salesforce delivered robust revenue growth, record profitability, and decisive capital allocation -- signaling that its long-term growth story remains fully intact. The company reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $10.24 billion, up 11% year-over-year, slightly beating Wall Street expectations of $10.12 billion. Net income came in at $2.21 billion, compared to $1.62 billion in the same period last year, representing a 36% jump. Adjusted earnings per share stood at $2.91, topping estimates by nearly 7%. Operating margin reached a record 33.1%, up from 31.6% a year earlier, reflecting Salesforce's ongoing cost optimization initiatives and disciplined execution. CEO Marc Benioff described the quarter as "a defining moment in Salesforce's transformation," emphasizing that the company's integration of AI across every product line is reshaping its value proposition. "AI isn't an add-on for Salesforce -- it's the core of how our customers operate, sell, and serve," he said during the earnings call. AI-related revenue, including products from Einstein GPT, Data Cloud, and Tableau AI, surged 42% year-over-year, with customer adoption up over 50% quarter-on-quarter. The Data Cloud platform, which unifies enterprise data for AI applications, is now used by more than 1,400 clients, including Coca-Cola, Ford, and Unilever, marking it as Salesforce's fastest-growing product. The company's recurring revenue base continues to expand, with subscription and support revenue accounting for 93% of total sales. Deferred revenue grew 9% to $15.3 billion, highlighting strong renewals and multi-year contracts across large enterprise accounts. Salesforce's remaining performance obligations (RPO) reached $54.2 billion, up 10% year-over-year, providing clear visibility into future revenue streams. Salesforce's efficiency push is delivering tangible results. Free cash flow rose 31% to $3.4 billion, while operating cash flow hit $4.2 billion. The company's free cash flow margin of 33% now ranks among the highest in large-cap software. Total cash and equivalents stood at $15.6 billion, giving the company flexibility to pursue both innovation and shareholder returns. In a move welcomed by investors, Salesforce announced a $7 billion share repurchase program, following through on its commitment to return capital while maintaining long-term investment discipline. The company has repurchased nearly $16 billion in shares since 2023, underscoring a maturing approach to capital efficiency. Benioff reaffirmed Salesforce's ambitious 2030 revenue target of $60 billion, implying a 9-10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. The company expects to achieve this through the continued scaling of its AI-driven Data Cloud, expansion of Einstein Copilot and AI Trust Layer, and integration of generative AI capabilities across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Slack. Management highlighted that over 65% of Fortune 500 companies now use three or more Salesforce Clouds, illustrating strong cross-platform adoption and customer stickiness. Financially, Salesforce's transformation since 2023 has been profound. After a wave of layoffs and restructuring, the company has emerged leaner, more profitable, and strategically aligned with AI-led enterprise spending. Operating expenses as a share of revenue have fallen from 72% to 64%, while R&D efficiency has improved by 8 percentage points. This margin discipline, paired with accelerating AI adoption, has restored investor confidence in the long-term model. Challenges remain, particularly from Microsoft's Dynamics 365 and Oracle's Fusion Cloud, both of which are leveraging large language models to compete in enterprise automation. Yet Salesforce's advantage lies in its ecosystem depth, brand trust, and integration capabilities -- positioning it as the preferred AI layer for corporate CRM data. As Salesforce eyes the next phase of its growth story, it is no longer just a SaaS company -- it has become a critical enabler of enterprise intelligence. With revenue momentum, a $7 billion buyback, and expanding AI monetization, Salesforce's narrative has shifted decisively from recovery to leadership. At $294.20 per share, the market is once again pricing Salesforce not as a legacy software vendor, but as the infrastructure behind modern enterprise transformation -- where every customer decision is powered by AI.

Salesforce forecasts stronger-than-expected revenue of over $60 billion in 2030

(Reuters) -Salesforce expects revenue of more than $60 billion in 2030, above Wall Street estimates, as the company rapidly rolls out AI features across its cloud services. Investors are pressuring cloud firms to show returns on the billions poured into AI, while an uncertain macro environment and volatile customer spending weigh on growth prospects. The forecast excludes the impact from its deal to acquire software-maker Informatica, according to a presentation made at Salesforce's Dreamforce event. Analysts, on average, expect Salesforce to report annual revenue of about $58.37 billion in 2030, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its shares rose by nearly 4% in aftermarket trading. The stock has lost 29% this year. Salesforce agreed to buy Informatica for around $8 billion in May to boost its AI capabilities by integrating Informatica's data management, integration, and governance tools into its platform. Its Agentforce AI agent platform automates tasks and helps streamline operations, boosting margins. Agentforce 360 will be available globally across its suite of cloud-based tools, Salesforce said on Monday. The company forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates in September, signaling lagging monetization for its highly touted AI agent platform as clients dial back spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty. It also outlined plans on Wednesday to buy back shares worth about $7 billion over the next six months. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Pooja Desai)