Marc Benioff says AI does up to 50% of Salesforce's work and predicts ‘digital labor revolution'

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

Artificial intelligence now performs up to half the internal work at Salesforce, according to founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who says his company is spearheading a 'digital labor revolution' that will reshape the future of work.
'AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce now,' Benioff said during an episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang on Thursday, citing software engineering and customer service as key areas transformed by automation.
He added that the company's internal use of AI has helped reduce hiring needs while boosting productivity.
Benioff's bullish stance on AI is centered around a new platform called Agent Force, which deploys 'digital employees' to handle tasks ranging from customer service and analytics to marketing and branding.
Salesforce aims to reach one billion active agents by the end of the year.
'It's the fastest-growing, most exciting thing we've ever done,' he said, noting that more than 5,000 customers are already using the technology.
Benioff said the company's flagship AI agent has reached 93% accuracy in customer interactions, including with major clients like Walt Disney Co. Still, he emphasized the importance of vigilance, especially around security and misinformation.
'You have to be completely paranoid,' he said.
At 59, Benioff continues to embrace his role as a tech industry disruptor. A self-taught programmer who sold his first software product as a teenager, he worked under Larry Ellison at Oracle before founding Salesforce in 1999.
The idea for the company, he said, came to him while swimming with dolphins in Hawaii.
Salesforce went on to revolutionize enterprise software by delivering it via the internet, pioneering the software-as-a-service model and becoming a global CRM leader with clients like Apple, Amazon and Boeing.
Despite his enthusiasm, he acknowledged the technology's disruptive impact on labor.
Salesforce has already cut over a thousand jobs, and Benioff predicts that today's CEOs may be the last to manage entirely human workforces. He estimates AI could unlock $3 to $12 trillion in global productivity.
Benioff said he meditates daily, weaves Hawaiian spiritualism into company culture, and once spent over $20 million to license Einstein's likeness for Salesforce's AI branding.
He proudly describes himself as 'the Taylor Swift of tech.'
To illustrate his embrace of AI, Benioff said he co-authored the company's latest business plan with an AI assistant — an exercise he described as making the CEO job 'less lonely.'
He is also blunt when it comes to competition. Benioff dismissed Microsoft's Copilot as 'repackaged ChatGPT,' drawing a contrast with Salesforce's more autonomous Agent Force platform.
He supports breaking up Big Tech, saying the industry has 'probably been too big.'
While facing criticisms over shifting diversity initiatives and political opportunism, Benioff remains committed to corporate responsibility.
You can 'do well and do good,' he said, referring to Salesforce's 1-1-1 model, which pledges 1% of company equity, product and employee time to philanthropic causes.
'I think it's a false narrative,' he said. 'The people who are creating the future are here. This isn't the first gold rush we've been through.'