Marc Benioff couldn't believe his eyes.
The co-founder, president and CEO of Salesforce (CRM) giant customer relationship management software provider, took to x recently to express frustration over what it viewed as wasteful government spending.
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“Incredible,” he wrote in <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/Benioff/status/1860847476980552112″>and November 24 posts. “The growth of government has outpaced frontline heroes like social workers and public safety officials, with regulatory, compliance and policy demands consuming up to 40% of budgets,” he wrote. “It's time for a transformation.”
Benioff said ai agents — autonomous intelligent systems that can perform specific tasks without human intervention — “can revolutionize operations, automating reporting, audits, case management and direct citizen services.”
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“The result? Billions saved, backlogs eliminated, and agencies empowered to prioritize public safety and well-being,” he said. “Let's replace bureaucracy with a layer of agents that serves people, not politics. Welcome to the future, welcome Agentforce!”
That last reference was a nod to the San Francisco company's Agentforce platform, which it said allows businesses to create, customize and deploy ai-powered autonomous agents to support customers and employees.
Salesforce CEO praises new 'Agentic Era'
Benioff, whose company is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results on Dec. 3, has said the agent revolution “is real and just as exciting as the cloud revolution… the social revolution, the mobile revolution.”
“We are now entering a new era of autonomous ai agents that act on their own and augment the work of humans,” Benioff wrote in time magazinewhich he bought in 2019 for $190 million.
“This is not just an evolution of technology. It is a revolution that will fundamentally redefine how humans work, live and connect with each other from now on.”
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Unlike traditional technology transformations of the past, which required years of expensive infrastructure construction, “these new ai agents are easy to build and deploy, unlocking massive capability,” Benioff argues.
“Of course, this new Agentic Era, like all technologies throughout history, will bring disruptions and risks that we ignore at our own peril,” he said. “Some companies will have a hard time adapting. Almost all jobs will change in some way. And yes, some will disappear.”
Benioff also said, however, that the benefits that ai agents bring to both individuals and businesses will far outweigh the initial disruptions.
Benioff isn't the only one telling the world about ai agents. A recent McKinsey report called ai agents “the next frontier of generative ai.”
The consulting firm said that while versions of standalone software systems have existed for years, “the natural language capabilities of (generative ai) reveal new possibilities, enabling systems that can plan their actions, use online tools to complete those tasks, Collaborate with other agents and people, and learn how to improve your performance.”
“ai generation agents could eventually act as trained virtual co-workers, working with humans in a natural and fluid way,” McKinsey said.
“It is not too early for business leaders to learn more about agents and consider whether some of their core processes or business imperatives can be accelerated with agent systems and capabilities,” the firm added.
Salesforce stock is up nearly 26% this year and 27.4% year-over-year.
Several investment firms have adjusted their price targets for the company's shares ahead of the earnings report.
Analyst Sees Salesforce Will Bring ai to the Masses
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team of analysts think highly of Salesforce, telling investors in a research note that “CRM remains one of our favorite tech names heading into 2025.”
Ives, who maintained his Outperform rating and $375 price target on the company's stock, said that at Salesforce, monetizing ai “will be a key growth catalyst… for years to come.”
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“Agentforce represents the company's latest advancements in the ai space with ai agents built with the latest ai capabilities to train models that handle routine use cases,” he wrote. \
In this way, humans can “focus on handling more complex situations with significantly greater resolution on sales and service issues.”
“We look forward to hearing more about Benioff's success in the field on this week's conference call, as many (on Wall Street) are still very skeptical about CRM's ai strategy in the coming years,” he added.
Piper Sandler analyst Brent Bracelin raised the company's price target for Salesforce to $395 from $325 and affirmed an Overweight rating on the stock, according to The Fly.
Bracelin said 2026 is shaping up to be an important transition year for Salesforce as it lays the groundwork for bringing ai agents to enterprises broadly. New pricing and packaging offerings could better position the company for a recovery in 2027.
Against this backdrop and with potential fourth-quarter growth guidance of 8% on current remaining performance obligations, Bracelin said, he sees slight downside risk to analysts' 2026 revenue consensus of $41.3 billion. with a growth of 9%. (RPOs measure revenue from contracts a company has not yet completed.)
That said, the analyst said he had a bullish bias toward free cash flow, which could exceed $13.6 billion, and saw a sustainable path to double-digit percentage growth in free cash flow annually.
And on Nov. 27, Citi analyst Tyler Radke raised the investment firm's price target on Salesforce to $368 from $290 and maintained a neutral rating on the stock.
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Radke said Agentforce has outperformed Salesforce's narrative with positive feedback from partners, boosting the stock 35% since the company's Dreamforce event in October.
Looking ahead to Salesforce's third-quarter report on December 3, Citi's checks suggest slightly better demand trends.
Radke said he expected the company's revenue and bookings growth to remain limited in the high single digits, although he generally views Wall Street's estimates for the third and fourth quarters as achievable.
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