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Salesforce (CRM) founder and CEO Marc Benioff isn’t buying the “SaaS is dead” narrative. With CRM stock down 41% from its 52-week high, that’s quite a rich position for the CEO to take. The disruption from artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just hurting Salesforce — it is bringing the whole software sector down, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) down more than 20% so far this year.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Benioff said, “the opportunity has never been greater.” Instead of surrendering to the thesis that AI will kill the need for its services, Salesforce is integrating AI into its offerings to better serve customers. Salesforce also works closely with OpenAI and Anthropic, but the firm’s own investors are now asking some tough questions. Will the company be able to improve its customer-issue handling to an extent that will require no human intervention, or is its AI just good for basic tasks? Additonally, will Salesforce be able to handle the loss of revenue when its AI becomes so good that companies don’t need to buy as many seats as before?
