Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Claims AI Now Handles Up to 50% of Company's Workload

AI is doing 30%-50% of the work at Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff says

"All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work," he said in an interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang, noting that the technology currently accounts for about 30% to 50% of the company's work. Technology companies are hunting for new ways to trim costs, boost efficiencies and transform their workforce with the help of AI. The aftershocks have already hit the tech industry, with the software giant cutting over 1,000 positions earlier this year as it restructured around AI.

Salesforce CEO Claims Half of the Company's Work Is Now Done by AI

So if you've noticed a decline in quality, there's an explanation. While many companies that went all in on AI have since pulled back, Salesforce is going full steam ahead. In an interview with Bloomberg, CEO Marc Benioff claimed that as much as 30% to 50% of the company's work is now completed by AIâ€"though no word on how much of his role personally has been made redunant or how much of his $39.6 million in compensation that he'll be giving up. “All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work,†Benioff said. In the case of some of Salesforce's employees, the whole "move on to do higher value work" thing will have to happen somewhere else. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was laying off 1,000 people. It also reportedly plans to hire another 1,000 who will be focused on selling the company's own AI agent technology, Agentforce. Put another way, Salesforce is hiring real people to sell other companies on adopting AI to replace some of its human workforce, which certainly seems like it would be one of the ten plagues of late-stage capitalism. Benioff and Salesforce are far from the only firm that is signaling that they will push for the AI revolution, whether it's ready or not. Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a letter to employees talking up the use of generative AI across the company's workflows, while slipping in a little note about how AI will lead to Amazon needing "fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today." That seems to be the underlying message of much of tech's embrace of AI: get ready for layoffs. Silicon Valley has gone from bragging about how many jobs it can create to bragging about how small it can shrink its workforce. Microsoft is in the midst of a second round of layoffs, per Fast Company, after already cutting its staff by 6,000 in May and shifting lots of money into AI investments. Other companies like Google and Bumble have been trimming people from departments within their firms, as well. According to Layoffs.fyi, the tech industry has laid off more than 63,000 workers in 2025 so far. Oftentimes, whether it's made explicit or not, corporate adoption of AI is the underlying reason for the cuts. Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, recently spoke with tech workers who have been affected by AI and found that the technology is reshaping jobs and workforces as a whole. An employee of CrowdStrike told Merchant that while the company positioned its recent layoff as cutting underperforming employees, many of them were new hires who the company decided were replaceable. "AI has literally killed many jobs at CrowdStrike this week." Another at Dropbox said that their team that focused on improving the service's reliability was let go in favor of promoting a new AI-powered tool.

Marc Benioff says AI now does up to 50% of Salesforce's work

Artificial intelligence isn't just a feature at Salesforce anymore -- it's apparently part of the workforce. According to CEO Marc Benioff, AI is now handling up to half of the company's total work, from engineering and support to marketing and analytics. "AI is doing 30 to 50 percent of the work at Salesforce now," Benioff said in a candid interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. "And I think that will continue." Benioff, long a tech optimist and evangelist, is now positioning Salesforce at the forefront of what he calls a "digital labor revolution" -- a sweeping shift in how work gets done, powered by AI agents, data, and automation. "I just finished writing the business plan for this year, and I always do that with someone else," he said. "For the last three years, I've also found a new partner in AI. So I have an AI partner, I have a human partner, and it's the three of us who are writing the plan together. It's a little less lonely at the top." That plan includes Agent Force, Salesforce's platform of AI-powered "digital employees." These agents are already being deployed to handle everything from customer service and marketing to analytics and sales support. "These agents... are out there doing this work," Benioff said. "Servicing the customer, selling the customer, marketing to the customer... partnering with me to do the analytics, the marketing, the branding." Benioff was frank about the implications. "We're probably looking at three to twelve trillion dollars of digital labor getting deployed," he said. "That digital labor's going to be everything from AI agents to robots." The company isn't alone. Tech giants from Amazon to Klarna have also made significant headcount reductions, attributing much of the change to AI adoption. Still, Benioff maintains that AI isn't just about doing the same work faster. He argues it's about freeing humans up for higher-value tasks. "All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that, before, we were doing," he said, "and we can move on to do higher value work." A Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University study published in February found that AI can hamper its users' critical thinking abilities, leading to "the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved." "You'll never see me saying that we're at 100 percent," he said. "But I think for a lot of the other vendors, maybe they're at much lower levels because they don't have as much data and metadata." He warned that businesses need to remain "completely paranoid" about security, noting there's "no finish line" when it comes to safeguarding AI systems. As for hallucinations and false outputs -- still common in many generative AI systems -- Benioff said there's hope that stacking models will improve truthfulness over time, but accuracy remains a moving target. And while he half-jokingly entertained the idea of being replaced by an AI himself -- "I hope so," he said with a laugh -- Benioff emphasized that "values" must remain central to how companies implement this technology. The executive did not specify the values to which he was referring. "CEOs have to make sure their values are in the right place," he said. "And that values bring value." "This is by far the fastest growing, most exciting thing we've ever done," he said. And if Benioff is right, it's just the beginning. As AI reshapes and upends the workplace -- from C-suites to call centers -- Salesforce may be offering a glimpse of what the new normal looks like.

Salesforce is using AI for up to 50% of its workload and its AI product is 93% accurate, says CEO Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff said the company now relies on artificial intelligence for 30% to 50% of its entire workload. The software giant, like many other tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Microsoft and Google, is going all in on the AI boom. "All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work," Benioff told Bloomberg, including positions like software engineering and customer service. "It's these agents, these digital laborers, digital employees who are out there doing this work servicing the customers, selling to the customer, marketing to the customer, partnering with me to do the analytics, do the marketing, the branding." Benioff said he even writes his yearly business plan with an AI partner, along with a "human" Salesforce executive, adding the company was on track to have one billion of these "agents" before the end of the year. (65% of companies are now experimenting with AI agents, according to an April KPMG survey.)

Salesforce CEO Says AI Is Doing Over 30% of Tasks at the Company: 'Higher-Value Work'

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said AI is handling a lot of work at his company previously done by humans -- up to half of all work. In an interview on Bloomberg's The Circuit with Emily Chang on Thursday, Benioff said that AI is doing "30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce now." Related: AI Is Going to 'Replace Everybody' in Several Fields, According to the 'Godfather of AI.' Here's Who He Says Should Be 'Terrified.' Salesforce sells AI products that tout the ability to handle tasks without human supervision, which Benioff told Bloomberg has about 93% accuracy. Customers include entertainment behemoth Walt Disney Co., among others. "All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that before we were doing," Benioff added. "We can move on to do higher-value work." Tech companies are incorporating AI into daily tasks across Silicon Valley. At Microsoft, engineers are using AI to write 20% to 30% of the code for company projects, CEO Satya Nadella said at Meta's LlamaCon conference in April. Related: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says AI Will Advance Humanity in These 4 Key Ways Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated at the same conference that AI will take over half of the company's software development within the next year. Meanwhile, CEO Sundar Pichai said on an earnings call in April that the company was using AI to write "well over 30%" of new code, up from 25% in October. Google employees are increasingly accepting AI-suggested code, he said.

AI Runs Up To Half The Show At Salesforce, CEO Says - Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)

Get ahead of Wall Street reactions -- Benzinga Pro delivers signals, squawk, and news fast. Now 60% off this 4th of July. Salesforce, Inc. CRM CEO Marc Benioff said on Thursday that artificial intelligence is now responsible for handling between 30% and 50% of the company's workload. The Details: Salesforce is rapidly increasing its use of AI to automate tasks and streamline operations, Benioff told CNBC in an interview. The CEO emphasized that everyone must recognize how AI is taking over jobs previously done by humans, enabling teams to concentrate on higher-value activities. Read Next: AST SpaceMobile Stock Downgraded, Rocket Lab Prepares Electron Launch: Space Stock Countdown Benioff described this shift as a "digital labor revolution," noting that Salesforce's AI implementations have achieved about 93% accuracy -- a level he considers strong, though he admits that perfect accuracy is unrealistic. He also pointed out that other providers struggle to match this level of precision, largely due to insufficient data and metadata. The impact of AI adoption is being felt across the tech industry, with Salesforce itself eliminating over 1,000 jobs earlier this year as part of its AI-driven restructuring. Other major companies, such as CrowdStrike and Klarna, are also reducing their workforces as they invest in AI. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has mentioned plans to utilize AI to make the company's workforce more efficient. What Else: On Tuesday, PepsiCo, Inc. PEP announced a major collaboration with Salesforce to deploy Salesforce's Agentforce platform -- an AI-driven tool designed to embed digital agents into operational workflows to streamline customer and sales processes. Salesforce will also leverage its Data Cloud, Consumer Goods Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud platforms to help unify PepsiCo's data streams and automate marketing and retail execution. Beyond consumer goods, Salesforce is expanding Agentforce into other industries such as healthcare, showcasing the broad applicability of its AI-powered solutions. Read Next: UnitedHealth, CVS Among Major Insurers To Fast-Track Prior Authorizations: Will It Cut Profits Even More? Image: Shutterstock CRMSalesforce Inc $268.160.15% Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full Score Edge Rankings Momentum 32.71 Growth 90.09 Quality 60.34 Value 8.76 Price Trend Short Medium Long Overview PEPPepsiCo Inc $128.040.01% This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Salesforce Says AI Is Doing 30% of Its Coding and Customer Service | PYMNTS.com

That share will continue to grow, Benioff said on the Thursday (June 26) episode of Bloomberg's "The Circuit with Emily Chang." "All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher-value work," Benioff said. Across industries, the "digital labor revolution" enabled by AI tools will add up to $3 trillion to $12 trillion of digital labor being deployed, including AI agents and robots, Benioff said. "We're becoming more automated," Benioff said. Asked about the risks of implementing AI tools, Benioff said that security will always be a challenge, but that hallucinations are being reduced as Salesforce adds more information to make AI more accurate. "In our own work, we're doing hundreds of thousands of conversations, just ourselves and our company with our customers, and we have about 93% accuracy," Benioff said. "Even for a large brand or a large company that we work with, like Disney, it's about 93%." Speaking of AI agents in general, Benioff said they represent "what AI was meant to be." "These are agents who are making you more productive or reducing your cost, making things easier," he said. Asked about an earlier statement that Salesforce will have 1 billion AI agents on its platform by the end of the year, Benioff said the company is "remarkably on track." "We now have about 5,000 customers deploying this, and it's amazing how many agents we see getting spawned," Benioff said. "By far, it's the fastest growing, most exciting thing we've ever done." Salesforce is seeing demand for its data cloud services as enterprises realize they have to better organize their data to fully tap the power of AI, Gabrielle Tao, senior vice president of product management at Salesforce, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in April. "We make enterprise data ready for the agentic era," Tao said, adding that the platform has seen strong growth in recent years. "We're very excited to keep going and make agentic experiences world class."