Latest news with #AgentForce
The Star
2 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Marc Benioff says AI does 50% of Salesforce's work, calls himself the 'Taylor Swift of tech'
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 last week, 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 centred 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 seeks to reach one billion active agents by the end of the year. "It's the fastest-growing, most exciting thing we've ever done," Benioff 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 such as Walt Disney Co. Still, he emphassed 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 revolutionise enterprise software by delivering it via the Internet, pioneering the software-as-a-service model and becoming a global CRM leader with clients including Apple, Amazon and Boeing. Now, Benioff says the San Francisco firm is transforming for the AI era. Despite his enthusiasm, he acknowledged the technology's disruptive impact on labour. Salesforce has already cut more than 1,000 jobs, and Benioff predicts that today's CEOs may be the last to manage entirely human workforces. He estimates AI could unlock US$3 trillion (RM12 trillion) to US$12 trillion (RM50 trillion) in global productivity. Benioff said he meditates daily, weaves Hawaiian spiritualism into company culture, and once spent more than US$20mil (RM84mil) to license physicist Albert 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-wrote 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. As for his hometown, Benioff rejects claims of San Francisco's decline. "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." – San Francisco Chronicle/Tribune News Service
San Francisco Chronicle
6 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Marc Benioff says AI does up to 50% of Salesforce's work and predicts ‘digital labor revolution'
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.'
Time of India
13-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India's digital businesses are innovating faster with data & AI, says Databricks founder
India's digital-native businesses are artificial intelligence (AI)-hungry and ahead of the curve from global peers when it comes to innovation with data and AI , said Ali Ghodsi, founder and chief executive of Databricks . 'India's great because when the rest of the world is talking about recession, India is on the upswing. And in the last decade, they've built a lot of digital infrastructure in India, which is a game-changer. India's ahead on digital infrastructure compared to most other countries in the world,' Ghodsi said while addressing the media at the Databricks Data + AI Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. The Silicon Valley's data and AI company Databricks recently committed a $250 million investment in India over the next three years towards local R&D, talent development, and enterprise adoption of AI. "We're doubling down on Bangalore. We hired a huge engineering team. We target the IITs," he said, mentioning an instance where the company received 700 applications from IIT graduates for just four open positions in Bangalore. Ghodsi said that the company is extremely bullish on Asian markets, including India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which are moving faster than the rest of the world on AI because of the relaxed regulatory environment. 'We're investing ahead of the game there. We're not just looking at how much revenue we get? Is the ROI there? Instead. We're saying, let's put even more there than the numbers justify, because we're so bullish on what's happening in Asia,' he said. At the annual conference on Wednesday, Databricks made a slew of bold announcements challenging traditional players in database management, AI apps and agents. Here's a rundown of key announcements: Agent bricks Taking a fresh approach to agentic AI, Databricks is focusing on the quality and cost of productising agents with 'Agent Bricks', an offering that directly challenges Salesforce's Agent Force and Google's Agent Space. 'There are a lot of challenges in the industry around building agents. We can't evaluate the quality of the agents. We don't know how these agents are doing in production,' Ghodsi said, adding that there are no evaluations or benchmarks for judging the performance of agents. Hence, Databricks is introducing LLM judges for automated evaluations. Agent Bricks' auto optimisation techniques, such as knowledge extraction and multi-agent supervisor can refine the agent for the best quality output, sometimes at 10 times lower cost. Lakebase Challenging the traditional database platforms like Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL, Databricks announced Lakebase, a first-of-its-kind fully-managed Postgres database built for AI. 'We think that's going to disrupt the existing database market, which has really not changed much in 40 years. But I think now is the time where it's actually under a lot of pressure with agents coming in,' Ghodsi said, adding that the company is targeting a $100 billion total addressable market with Lakebase. Databricks, last month, announced the acquisition of Neon, a leading serverless Postgres company, which showed that over 30% of the databases at Neon were actually created by agents, not by database administrators. 'So next year, it's probably 99% plus.' Therefore, in the new AI era, enterprises need different types of databases where compute and storage are completely separated, he explained. 'You just store the database on very cheap cloud storage in an open format so you're not locked into anyone (single vendor).' Over 300 Databricks customers are already using Lakebase, and this transition is going to be the most important marathon for the next five years, he said. Databricks free edition To close the AI talent gap, Databricks also announced the free edition of its platform, along with a $100 million global investment in data and AI education. This initiative gives students, professionals, and institutions free access to Databricks tools and training. Among other notable announcements made was the Lakeflow Designer, a new no-code capability that lets non-technical users create data pipelines using a visual drag-and-drop interface and a natural language GenAI assistant. (The reporter was in San Francisco at the invitation of Databricks)
Economic Times
12-06-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
India's digital businesses are innovating faster with Data + AI, says Databricks founder
Live Events India's digital-native businesses are artificial intelligence (AI)-hungry and ahead of the curve from global peers when it comes to innovation with data and AI , said Ali Ghodsi, founder and chief executive of Databricks 'India's great because when the rest of the world is talking about recession, India is on the upswing. And in the last decade, they've built a lot of digital infrastructure in India, which is a game-changer. India's ahead on digital infrastructure compared to most other countries in the world,' Ghodsi said while addressing the media at the Databricks Data + AI Summit in San Francisco on Silicon Valley's data and AI company Databricks recently committed a $250 million investment in India over the next three years towards local R&D, talent development, and enterprise adoption of AI."We're doubling down on Bangalore. We hired a huge engineering team. We target the IITs," he said, mentioning an instance where the company received 700 applications from IIT graduates for just four open positions in said that the company is extremely bullish on Asian markets, including India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which are moving faster than the rest of the world on AI because of the relaxed regulatory environment.'We're investing ahead of the game there. We're not just looking at how much revenue we get? Is the ROI there? Instead. We're saying, let's put even more there than the numbers justify, because we're so bullish on what's happening in Asia,' he the annual conference on Wednesday, Databricks made a slew of bold announcements challenging traditional players in database management, AI apps and agents. Here's a rundown of key announcements:Taking a fresh approach to agentic AI, Databricks is focusing on the quality and cost of productising agents with 'Agent Bricks', an offering that directly challenges Salesforce's Agent Force and Google's Agent Space.'There are a lot of challenges in the industry around building agents. We can't evaluate the quality of the agents. We don't know how these agents are doing in production,' Ghodsi said, adding that there are no evaluations or benchmarks for judging the performance of Databricks is introducing LLM judges for automated evaluations. Agent Bricks' auto optimisation techniques, such as knowledge extraction and multi-agent supervisor can refine the agent for the best quality output, sometimes at 10 times lower the traditional database platforms like Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL, Databricks announced Lakebase, a first-of-its-kind fully-managed Postgres database built for AI.'We think that's going to disrupt the existing database market, which has really not changed much in 40 years. But I think now is the time where it's actually under a lot of pressure with agents coming in,' Ghodsi said, adding that the company is targeting a $100 billion total addressable market with last month, announced the acquisition of Neon, a leading serverless Postgres company, which showed that over 30% of the databases at Neon were actually created by agents, not by database administrators. 'So next year, it's probably 99% plus.'Therefore, in the new AI era, enterprises need different types of databases where compute and storage are completely separated, he explained. 'You just store the database on very cheap cloud storage in an open format so you're not locked into anyone (single vendor).'Over 300 Databricks customers are already using Lakebase, and this transition is going to be the most important marathon for the next five years, he close the AI talent gap, Databricks also announced the free edition of its platform, along with a $100 million global investment in data and AI education. This initiative gives students, professionals, and institutions free access to Databricks tools and other notable announcements made was the Lakeflow Designer, a new no-code capability that lets non-technical users create data pipelines using a visual drag-and-drop interface and a natural language GenAI assistant.(The reporter was in San Francisco at the invitation of Databricks)
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India's digital businesses are innovating faster with Data + AI, says Databricks founder
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads India's digital-native businesses are artificial intelligence (AI)-hungry and ahead of the curve from global peers when it comes to innovation with data and AI , said Ali Ghodsi, founder and chief executive of Databricks 'India's great because when the rest of the world is talking about recession, India is on the upswing. And in the last decade, they've built a lot of digital infrastructure in India, which is a game-changer. India's ahead on digital infrastructure compared to most other countries in the world,' Ghodsi said while addressing the media at the Databricks Data + AI Summit in San Francisco on Silicon Valley's data and AI company Databricks recently committed a $250 million investment in India over the next three years towards local R&D, talent development, and enterprise adoption of AI."We're doubling down on Bangalore. We hired a huge engineering team. We target the IITs," he said, mentioning an instance where the company received 700 applications from IIT graduates for just four open positions in said that the company is extremely bullish on Asian markets, including India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which are moving faster than the rest of the world on AI because of the relaxed regulatory environment.'We're investing ahead of the game there. We're not just looking at how much revenue we get? Is the ROI there? Instead. We're saying, let's put even more there than the numbers justify, because we're so bullish on what's happening in Asia,' he the annual conference on Wednesday, Databricks made a slew of bold announcements challenging traditional players in database management, AI apps and agents. Here's a rundown of key announcements:Taking a fresh approach to agentic AI, Databricks is focusing on the quality and cost of productising agents with 'Agent Bricks', an offering that directly challenges Salesforce's Agent Force and Google's Agent Space.'There are a lot of challenges in the industry around building agents. We can't evaluate the quality of the agents. We don't know how these agents are doing in production,' Ghodsi said, adding that there are no evaluations or benchmarks for judging the performance of Databricks is introducing LLM judges for automated evaluations. Agent Bricks' auto optimisation techniques, such as knowledge extraction and multi-agent supervisor can refine the agent for the best quality output, sometimes at 10 times lower the traditional database platforms like Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL, Databricks announced Lakebase, a first-of-its-kind fully-managed Postgres database built for AI.'We think that's going to disrupt the existing database market, which has really not changed much in 40 years. But I think now is the time where it's actually under a lot of pressure with agents coming in,' Ghodsi said, adding that the company is targeting a $100 billion total addressable market with last month, announced the acquisition of Neon, a leading serverless Postgres company, which showed that over 30% of the databases at Neon were actually created by agents, not by database administrators. 'So next year, it's probably 99% plus.'Therefore, in the new AI era, enterprises need different types of databases where compute and storage are completely separated, he explained. 'You just store the database on very cheap cloud storage in an open format so you're not locked into anyone (single vendor).'Over 300 Databricks customers are already using Lakebase, and this transition is going to be the most important marathon for the next five years, he close the AI talent gap, Databricks also announced the free edition of its platform, along with a $100 million global investment in data and AI education. This initiative gives students, professionals, and institutions free access to Databricks tools and other notable announcements made was the Lakeflow Designer, a new no-code capability that lets non-technical users create data pipelines using a visual drag-and-drop interface and a natural language GenAI assistant.(The reporter was in San Francisco at the invitation of Databricks)
