James Altucher
Investor & Author, Technology & Markets
Salesforce might be dead as intelligence becomes an abundant commodity, though it can argue it has distribution. Claude, OpenAI and open-weight models such as Kimi, Qwen and DeepSeek are in a price fight to zero, so years of developer work no longer form a moat. The new moats are trust, distribution and data, especially data behind corporate firewalls, in hospitals or otherwise hard to get. x.comÂ
Salesforce looks vulnerable long term because users hate it and will happily switch to alternatives, while in the AI era users actually liking a product will be a key moat for SaaS stocks. Adobe showed this when users who hated it switched more easily to Figma. Present-day fundamentals look great across these companies, so the threat is still theoretical. 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's poor M&A is literally half the reason its multiple stays low. Slack and Informatica are cited as examples, with Braze raised as a question; AI making Tableau obsolete in a few years would be a separate risk, not itself poor M&A. 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
AI is going to kill Salesforce, Adobe and Netflix, whether the AI is American or not. Beyond the narrative, the question is their underlying growth prospects, and one firsthand workplace already uses only homegrown AI tools and essentially no SaaS products. x.com x.comÂ
Salesforce owns the customer data AI needs to be valuable, so the death-of-software trade is aging badly. Hardware and software climb together, and this quarter showed the AI benefit cannot be captured on the chip side alone. Per @qualtrim, Salesforce now earns $10.96 a share at 18x earnings, versus $5.56 at 39x two years ago. 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
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
The SaaSpocalypse narrative makes less and less sense for Salesforce, ServiceNow and Palantir, because enterprises will deploy AI agents that use software tools rather than build their own software. Jensen Huang says agents won't replace tools but will use them, and NVIDIA has deployed so many agents that its tool usage is actually increasing. x.comÂ
OpenAI and Anthropic will eat Snowflake's and Databricks' business. Both cloud data platforms are cooked. x.comÂ
