Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the next big thing for enterprise software, and Salesforce in particular, is AI agents, software bots that perform limited tasks themselves, separate from human workers.
“What would happen if there were no limits for employees? That's a question I haven't been able to ask in not just the last 25 years of working at Salesforce, but in the 45 years I've been in the software business,” Benioff said. told TechCrunch on the Equity podcast.
He said that “hundreds of customers” are already using Agentforce, the company's AI agent platform, for their businesses. “Our goal is to have 1 billion agents in place within a year,” he said.
He cited his own experience visiting Disney parks using Disney's Private Tour Guide, a virtual tour guide that scripts the day and handles the fast-track entry Lightning Lane.
“Oh, my agent said he's monitoring all the flow controls for every ride in the park. That means every ride you've ever ridden and everything you haven't yet ridden in Toontown. So let's go in that direction,'' he explained of the experience.
He also talked about how agents in the medical industry conduct daily follow-ups to ensure patients are following instructions, and Gucci leverages call center agents to provide up-to-date product information and He said the sale was completed.
Benioff, on the other hand, was quick to criticize agent-creation software from Microsoft, its biggest longtime rival. In October, Microsoft introduced 10 new autonomous agents to Dynamics 365. It is a Salesforce competitor and agent maker as part of Copilot Studio.
Days after the announcement, Benioff publicly criticized Microsoft products. He likened Copilot to Clippy, Microsoft's talking paperclip cartoon character that was widely criticized in the 1990s. He cited Gartner research on Copilot's imperfections, from administrative tasks to controlling agent answers.
“Why are they leaking data? Why are people seeing data that shouldn't be seeing it?” he said of Microsoft's Copilot on Equity. “Copilot has really let down so many customers, but not only that, but there's also talk of having to create your own LLM and this and that. And that's not going to transform the company. .”
Of course, those predicting risks from Salesforce's AI (and many do these days) aren't claiming that Microsoft's AI agents will perform better.
They are witnessing even bigger changes. With the rise of GenAI in the enterprise, enterprise AI startups have the potential to create the next multi-billion dollar business, displacing some traditional players. And AI sales force startups are booming. The same goes for AI customer service representative startups, which are Salesforce's two biggest markets.
More than that, the days of terrible enterprise software interfaces, searching for all the right buttons to accomplish a goal, are coming to an end. The GenAI interface means you simply request a sales pipeline report and the software will generate it for you.
In September, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski made news when he announced that the company would be completely discontinuing Salesforce and Workday in favor of some of its own GenAI apps. This is after building a customer service AI assistant called Kiki using OpenAI, which was used by 90% of its employees.
If OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is to be believed, AGI, a near-sentient AI with advanced reasoning abilities capable of processing subtle commands, will arrive sooner rather than later.
Benioff scoffs that all of this is a threat. “I watched 'Minority Report,' I watched 'Her,' I watched 'A Space Odyssey.' I watched all of that, and that's not where we are today. ” he told Equity.
He understands the argument that Salesforce is well-positioned among enterprise companies to take advantage of AI, rather than being obliterated by it. That's because for AI to be useful, it needs to consume a lot of data, and Salesforce has that data.
“We manage 230 petabytes of data for our customers. You might say that's one of the main activities we do for them. And we… We do that with a security and sharing model,” he said. So, “Even if we were in the world, my banker can't see your account balance, and your banker can't see my bank account balance.” Same bank. ”
Many companies are now wondering what to do with the data they share with OpenAI. ChatGPT Enterprise has a security guarantee. Microsoft says moving to another cloud provider that also sells the latest OpenAI models means moving all your data from Salesforce to Microsoft's cloud. This is a big pain project and will involve replacing one major software player with another.
Meanwhile, Salesforce also uses its own agents internally to run its business, Benioff said. “We use this in customer service, of course in our call center, and we're trying to place our sales agents. If you go to help.salesforce.com and are authenticated as a Salesforce customer, you can connect our agents to to access all the help.
What about emerging companies that could emerge and pose a threat? Benioff says they could provide an M&A target for Salesforce. Salesforce Ventures is one of the most active corporate venture firms in the technology industry.
“We've made over 60 acquisitions, and that's across a lot of startups,” he said, noting that “even Agentforce” is buying a startup called Airkit.ai, founded by former Salesforce employees. It added that it was built using acquired technology. . “We invested in the company. He built the company. We acquired it and reintegrated it into our platform. That's why we were able to release this so quickly and quickly I was able to finish it.”