Salesforce CEO Uses Record Quarter to Kill ‘AI Will Replace SaaS' Narrative

Salesforce beat second-quarter revenue and profit estimates on August 26. It then used the results to challenge fears that AI would gut demand for enterprise software.

Chief Executive Marc Benioff pointed to the company's expanded partnership with Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude. He called it the clearest evidence for that argument.

Anthropic Deal Becomes the Counter-Example

Salesforce and Anthropic unveiled Claudeforce, letting salespeople pull Salesforce data inside Claude to draft emails and update records. It marks the first time Salesforce attached its "force" branding to another company's product.

Investors had worried AI chatbots would let companies skip licensed software, feeding a SaaSpocalypse debate across tech markets this year. Benioff argued the opposite is happening.

"This SaaSpocalypse narrative has been such nonsense."

Marc Benioff, CNBC

He framed Salesforce's stored customer data as the foundation AI models need to function inside a business. It is not a layer they can bypass, he argued.

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