(Bloomberg) — Salesforce Inc. plans to hire more than 1,000 workers to sell its new generative AI agent product.
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The hiring surge is aimed at capitalizing on “amazing momentum” for the new artificial intelligence product, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said in a message. “Agentforce became available just two weeks ago and we’re already hearing incredible feedback from our customers.”
The top seller of customer relations management software, Salesforce pivoted its AI strategy this year to focus on agents — tools that can complete tasks such as customer support or sales development without human supervision. It launched the product, dubbed Agentforce, last month, with initial pricing of about $2 per agent conversation.
Over the past two years, the San Francisco-based company has worked to control sales expenses by cutting jobs and persuading some customers to use more self-service or third-party purchasing options. At the end of January, Salesforce had 72,682 employees, according to a filing.
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Other software makers such as ServiceNow Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also developing autonomous agents. Benioff has taken repeated jabs at Microsoft’s AI efforts. “When you look at how Copilot has been delivered to customers, it’s disappointing,” Benioff posted last month on X, citing Microsoft’s brand name for its AI assistants.
The shares, which were up about 1.5%, jumped another 2.5% on the news Friday to a record high of $322.81 in New York. The stock had gained 18% this year through Thursday’s close.
(Updates with share price in the sixth paragraph.)
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