Salesforce’s (Small) AI Lift

There may be some blurry light at the end of the tunnel for Marc Benioff. Salesforce’s fiscal third-quarter numbers released on Wednesday suggest its revenue from AI products is growing enough to lift its annual growth rate just a bit. Salesforce is still growing very slowly—its new projection is for revenue to expand 9.2% in the current fiscal year, when you exclude the impact of a recent acquisition. Still, for a company that has symbolized the challenges AI poses to enterprise software incumbents, any improvement in the trajectory counts as good news. Investors seemed satisfied: Salesforce stock rose 2% in after-hours trading.

Salesforce’s key AI product remains a relatively small revenue contributor. Salesforce reported that its Agentforce product did $540 million in annual recurring revenue in the quarter, representing an increase of 330% year on year. To put that into context, Salesforce expects total revenue in fiscal 2026 of about $42 billion. Moreover, Agentforce’s growth slowed slightly from the 400% growth rate in the second quarter, when ARR was $440 million, although such a red-hot growth rate would be expected to come down.