Vlad Bastion
Founder of Investment Bastion, Systematic Stock Ratings & Algorithmic Portfolios
Salesforce is set to make a lot of money from AI as the market realizes it may be an AI winner, not a victim. Agentforce ARR reached $1.5 billion, up 240% year over year, and Claude will become Agentforce's default model through an Anthropic partnership, with secure CRM data access and 37 prebuilt sales skills. Contracted revenue expected over the next 12 months reached $33.5 billion, up 14%, its fastest bookings growth in four years. x.comÂ
Salesforce keeps falling despite ranking first in the S&P 500 by buyback yield at 28.4%, because the market sees the buyback as a one-off funded by debt rather than cash flow. In March it ran a $25B accelerated share repurchase, the largest ever, financed with almost as much new debt. The buyback does nothing to remove the real fear that AI shrinks the number of Salesforce seats companies need to pay for. x.comÂ
Salesforce's usage-based AI billing can expand revenue beyond traditional software seats. Agentforce ARR has surpassed $1.5 billion, with year-over-year growth more than doubling, while Data 360 supplies customer data for its agents. At about 14-15x forward earnings and a 7.8-8.2% trailing free-cash-flow yield versus the S&P 500 median of 4.5%, Salesforce is a top candidate for returning institutional capital seeking both defense and growth. x.comÂ
Salesforce's strong free cash flow and healthy balance sheet support its setup as enterprise AI adoption, Agentforce and AI-driven workflow automation advance. Its earnings gap on four times average volume has been followed by a tightening formation. x.com x.comÂ
Salesforce is exposed to AI-native rivals aiming to own the sale itself rather than build a better CRM. Upstarts such as Attio, Monaco and Rox can capture the decision traces behind closed deals, a learning loop Claude cannot rebuild from Salesforce's fields. Its schema is more tax than foundation: relationship-driven work like recruiting and VC does not fit it, and young startups cannot be served profitably. Its 150k customers won't churn soon, but new AI-native firms may never install it. … Show more
Salesforce is being treated as a slow, outdated software company even as it keeps growing recurring revenue, expanding margins and converting its massive customer base into earnings. Its latest quarter delivered 16% cRPO growth and a 52% jump in GAAP EPS. The narrative changes when Agentforce and its wider AI strategy become a measurable revenue driver rather than another product announcement. x.comÂ
Salesforce's AI monetization is moving from pilots into production, a direct hit to the SaaS seat-compression bear case. Consumption-based Agentforce and Zero Copy data are driving real net expansion. Agentforce ARR passed $1.5 billion, up 240%, and with Data 360 reached about $3.9 billion, while 3.2 billion agentic work units ran in the second quarter, up 97% sequentially. Revenue rose 11% to $11.35 billion in a clean beat, and fiscal 2027 guidance rose to $46.1-46.4 billion. x.comÂ
Salesforce faces real AI threats: more competition, margin headwinds from compute costs and disruption risk for businesses like Tableau and Service Cloud. Agentforce is showing some momentum, and the stock felt oversold earlier, but it is not attractive at current levels. x.comÂ
Enterprise agents reached financial validation in 2026, and the first winners are platforms that already control company data, permissions and workflows. ServiceNow's AI ACV topped $1B as agent deployments rose 9x in nine months; Salesforce's Agentforce ARR passed $1.5B; AI drove over 25% of Workday's new ACV; and Palantir's US commercial revenue grew 149%. Pricing may shift from seats to work completed, tapping labor budgets, and agent revenue could grow nonlinearly as reliability improves. … Show more
Salesforce is accelerating because of AI, since AI agents need a CRM as their source of truth for data. Companies are not building their own CRMs, which is extremely hard; they build agents that plug into Salesforce, as human workers do. Q2 showed the lowest revenue churn ever, Agentforce and Data revenue growing over 200% year on year, and rising seat sales. Some SaaS is cooked, but gems like Salesforce were left for dead. x.comÂ
Salesforce looks reduced to a backend provider for Claude's Slack bot, undercutting claims that it is an obvious AI winner and undervalued in a SaaS recovery, a risk flagged as early as January. x.comÂ
Software stocks probably have a floor as results challenge fears that AI agents will displace them. Since the June 22 momentum unwind, IGV is up 25% and the SOX index down 22%. Atlassian and Salesforce jumped on solid results, plus an Anthropic deal for Salesforce, and possible Silver Lake interest lifted Workday. A new bullish twist says agents will use software tools 10-100x more than humans. Whether fundamentals back the rally is still open; a likely Fed hike and weak September are risks. … Show more
