Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the customer relationship software company expects to spend nearly $300 million on Anthropic tokens in 2026, with a large share of that linked to coding work and AI-powered software development.
Speaking on the All-In podcast, Benioff said AI coding tools are helping engineers work faster and more efficiently rather than replacing them completely. He described coding agents as “awesome” and said they are helping reduce software development costs while increasing output.
Hiring shift
The comments come after Salesforce decided not to hire software engineers this year. In January 2025, Benioff said the company had improved engineering productivity by more than 30% through the use of Agentforce and other AI systems.
Even though engineering hiring was paused, Salesforce continued recruiting in other departments. “We will have more salespeople next year because we really need to explain to people exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So, we will probably add another 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople in the short term,” he had said at the time.
AI’s impact on jobs
Benioff has also pushed back against concerns that AI will remove entry-level jobs entirely. According to him, the technology is instead creating new kinds of opportunities.
In fact, as recently as April, the Salesforce chief said in a post on X that the company would hire 1,000 graduates and interns. They are expected to support growing AI products such as Agentforce and Headless360.
Benioff has also said that Salesforce’s roughly 15,000 engineers are now increasingly working alongside AI systems, including Anthropic models, OpenAI Codex and Cursor.
“When they start to use these models, they’re now working not only with the AI, but agents to help them code — and they can even become somewhat supervisory over these agents,” Benioff said.
“But still, those engineers are needed. The model still cannot operate autonomously,” the Salesforce chief added. “We’re not at that level yet of AI.”
Bigger AI push
The increased spending on Anthropic tokens reflects Salesforce’s broader push into artificial intelligence across its business. In June 2025, in an interview with Bloomberg, Benioff said that AI is already responsible for 30-50% of Salesforce’s total workload.
The company has already invested more than $300 million in Anthropic and reportedly owns a stake in the AI startup.
At the same time, Agentforce has grown into an $800 million annual recurring revenue business. Slack, another Salesforce product, has also introduced new AI features powered by Anthropic’s Claude models.
Benioff has described the shift towards AI systems as a “digital labour revolution”.
