Salesforce becomes latest to ride AI wave as Agentforce powers stock surge

Salesforce recorded a new high as its shares went up 12% after its recently launched Agentforce helped the company exceed its sales estimate for the quarter. Its performance was boosted by its newly launched AI-integrated products, which analysts also cited in optimistic fiscal forecasts for 2025.

In late October, the customer relationship management (CRM) software heavyweight launched Agentforce, a suite of autonomous AI agents that augment employees and handle service, sales, marketing, and commerce tasks. 

Impressive Agentforce outing and positive forecast for 2025

In the early hours of morning trading, Salesforce shares hit $368.7, a record high that resulted in a potential addition of $35 billion to its current market valuation of $316.85 billion. Many analysts raised their price targets because of their confidence in the stock, according to LSEG data.

Salesforce stock went up 26% this year, with a new median price target of $380 representing an upside of about 15%. 

Other US tech company stocks in the cloud space have also seen surges in their stock prices. For example, Oracle saw a 3.2% rise, while ServiceNow gained 3.5%. Others like Datadog and Snowflake both saw a 4% rise. 

Expectations for Salesforce’s revenue for the 2025 fiscal year have slightly increased by $100 million, increasing to a new range between $37.8 billion to $38 billion compared to its previous forecast of $37.7 billion to $38 billion. 

The company also beat analyst revenue estimates, which rose to $9.44 billion during the third quarter of this year. 

While its steady growth continues to impress, analysts expect increasing enterprise adoption of Salesforce’s solutions to help the company to a steady double-digit percentage growth performance. 

Salesforce enters a competitive autonomous AI agent market

With Agentforce, Salesforce enters the race for stakes in the supply of autonomous AI agents that help businesses complete tasks. It enters competition with the likes of Microsoft, and a rivalry is already developing between both companies. 

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, called out Microsoft in October on X (Twitter), saying the latter’s Copilot does work and doesn’t deliver any level of accuracy. He also added in a press release that Agentforce is the third wave of AI and actively drives customer success.

When you look at how Copilot has been delivered to customers, it’s disappointing. It just doesn’t work, and it doesn’t deliver any level of accuracy. Gartner says it’s spilling data everywhere, and customers are left cleaning up the mess. To add insult to injury, customers are…

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) October 17, 2024

A week before Agentforce’s release, Microsoft announced that it would be enabling customers to build autonomous AI agents through its Copilot studio in the following month, which was November.

So far, Salesforce’s Agentforce seems to have delivered on its promise. Bullish on its early success, Salesforce has gone on to project that its AI product will continue to close more deals as it has already delivered 200 deals since its launch. 

Other than the success of its Agentforce AI, Salesforce’s high-performing data cloud was another major contributor to the company’s strong quarter. To meet up with increasing demand for Agentforce, Salesforce executives are reportedly planned to hire 1400 new staff members in the fourth quarter.

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