Marc Benioff goes on the offensive: 'This is not the SaaSpocalypse'

Marc Benioff is going connected the violative astir the alleged SaaSpocalypse.

"This delirium of this SaaSpocalypse, I deliberation it's clip for it to stop," the Salesforce CEO said during the company's second-quarter net telephone connected Wednesday.

Benioff utilized the telephone to push backmost connected fears that AI threatens accepted package companies.

"Our seats were expected to decline. Instead, Agentforce Sales, Services, Slack each saw year-over-year growth," Benioff said. "We were told customers would wantonness us. But attrition is adjacent its lowest level ever."

Benioff's comments onshore successful the mediate of 1 of Silicon Valley's biggest debates: the SaaSpocalypse. Investors person spent the past twelvemonth questioning whether AI agents will yet switch the package that galore workers usage today, threatening the subscription exemplary that built companies for illustration Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow.

If labor progressively interact pinch AI agents alternatively than individual applications, companies whitethorn request less accepted package seats. AI agents could besides perchance execute activity crossed systems without users opening those systems themselves, putting unit connected the per-user subscription exemplary that helped create immoderate of the exertion industry's astir valuable companies.

Salesforce's banal has fallen complete the past twelvemonth amid those concerns, dropping astir 19% truthful acold this twelvemonth astatine marketplace adjacent connected Wednesday.

Benioff based on that the company's latest results disprove those concerns, citing nett caller yearly bid growth, which Salesforce said was its strongest successful 4 years. Salesforce besides said subscription and support gross roseate 12% twelvemonth complete year, though that fig included a publication from its Informatica acquisition.

"This is not the SaaSpocalyps," Benioff said. "We've been proceeding astir this for the past 2 quarters, these dire predictions astir the extremity of software, and really the models eat everything, but nary of them person travel existent for us."

Shares were up much than 12% successful after-hours trading pursuing the net merchandise and announcement from Salesforce and Anthropic. The companies are partnering connected a plugin called Claudeforce to make Salesforce information disposable aliases return Salesforce actions wrong Claude. Salesforce is besides an investor successful Anthropic, and reported a $2.6 cardinal summation successful the 4th owed to the investment.

The business is absorbing arsenic it captures the hostility astatine the halfway of the SaaSpocalypse debate. Salesforce is betting that its underlying information and workflows will stay basal moreover arsenic Claude becomes the interface labor use. Workers whitethorn walk little clip wrong Salesforce, but AI agents could still dangle connected Salesforce to get activity done.

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