Marc Benioff couldn't believe his eyes.
The co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce (CRM) , the giant provider of customer-relations-management software, took to X recently to vent his frustration about what he considered wasteful government spending.
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"Incredible," he wrote in a Nov. 24 post. "Government growth has outpaced frontline heroes like social workers and public safety officers, with regulatory, compliance, and political demands consuming up to 40% of budgets," he wrote. "It’s time for a transformation."
Benioff said that AI agents — autonomous intelligent systems that can perform specific tasks without human intervention — "can revolutionize operations, automating reporting, audits, case management, and direct-to-citizen services."
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"The result? Billions saved, delays eliminated, and agencies empowered to prioritize public safety and welfare," he said. "Let’s replace bureaucracy with an agentic layer 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 enables companies to create, customize and deploy artificial-intelligence-powered autonomous agents to support customers and employees.
Salesforce CEO hails new 'Agentic Era'
Benioff, whose company is scheduled to report fiscal-third-quarter results on Dec. 3, has said that the agent revolution "is real and as exciting as the cloud revolution … the social revolution, the mobile revolution."
"We are now entering a new era of autonomous AI agents that take action on their own and augment the work of humans," Benioff wrote in Time magazine, which he bought in 2019 for $190 million.
"This isn’t just an evolution of technology. It’s a revolution that will fundamentally redefine how humans work, live, and connect with one another from this point forward."
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Unlike the traditional tech transformations of the past, which required years of costly infrastructure buildout, "these new AI agents are easy to build and deploy, unlocking massive capacity," Benioff argues.
"Of course, this new Agentic Era, like every technology throughout history, will bring about disruptions and risks that we ignore at our peril," he said. "Some companies will struggle to adapt. Nearly every job will change in some ways. And, yes, some will go away."
Benioff also said, however, that the benefits 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 dubbed AI agents "the next frontier of generative AI."
The consultancy said that while versions of independent software systems have existed for years, “the natural-language capabilities of [generative AI] unveil new possibilities, enabling systems that can plan their actions, use online tools to complete those tasks, collaborate with other agents and people, and learn to improve their performance.”
"Gen AI agents eventually could act as skilled virtual coworkers, working with humans in a seamless and natural manner," McKinsey said.
"It is not too soon for business leaders to learn more about agents and consider whether some of their core processes or business imperatives can be accelerated with agentic systems and capabilities," the firm added.
Salesforce shares have climbed nearly 26% this year and 27.4% from a year ago.
Several investment firms have adjusted their price targets for the company's shares ahead of the earnings report.
Analyst sees Salesforce bringing AI to masses
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team of analysts think very 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 shares, said that at Salesforce, monetizing AI "will be a key growth catalyst ... over the coming years."
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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.
Humans thus can "focus on handling more complex situations with significantly higher resolution on sales and service issues."
"We expect to hear more about the success in the field from Benioff on the conference call this week with many [on Wall Street] still very skeptical of CRM's AI strategy over the coming years," he added.
Piper Sandler analyst Brent Bracelin raised the firm's price target on Salesforce to $395 from $325 and affirmed an overweight rating on the shares, according to The Fly.
Bracelin said that 2026 is shaping up to be an important transitional year for Salesforce as it lays the groundwork to bring AI agents broadly to companies. New pricing and packaging offerings could better position the company for a 2027 rebound.
Against this backdrop and a potential fourth-quarter growth guide of 8% in current remaining performance obligations, Bracelin said, he sees slight downside risk to the 2026 analyst revenue consensus of $41.3 billion on 9% growth. (RPOs measure revenue from contracts that a company hasn't yet completed.)
That said, the analyst said he had an upward bias to free cash flow, which could exceed $13.6 billion, and saw a sustainable path to double-digit-percent 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 shares.
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Radke said Agentforce has overtaken Salesforce's narrative with positive partner feedback, driving the stock 35% since the company’s Dreamforce event in October.
Heading into Salesforce's Q3 report on Dec. 3, Citi's checks suggest slightly better demand trends.
Radke said he expected the company's revenue and bookings growth to remain constrained in the high-single-digits percent, though it generally sees Q3 and Q4 Wall Street estimates as achievable.
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