Salesforce Cutting 1,000 Jobs As It Pivots to AI

Salesforce is cutting 1,000 additional jobs, as it continues to pivot to AI, while simultaneously hiring additional personnel for AI sales.

Salesforce has been quietly emerging as a leader in the AI market, focusing its efforts on building AI agents that go far beyond basic chatbots.

According to Bloomberg, Salesforce is continuing to hire for AI sales roles, but is eliminating 1,000 other jobs as part of the realignment. It’s not known what divisions will see a reduction in roles. Impacted employees will, however, have the opportunity to apply for other roles within the company.

As the outlet points out, Salesforce is carefully watching its margins after activist investors pressured the company in 2023.

“Just because we have a hit new product doesn’t mean that we ignore the commitments we’ve made internally and externally as we think about scaling this business,” Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham said in December at an event hosted by Barclays Plc. “We’re looking across the entire company to say, ‘Where can we get more efficiencies? How can we continue to get fuel for the work that we’re doing to go invest in scale going forward?”

Salesforce’s AI Transition

Salesforce released its Agentforce platform in September 2024, touting it as “the Third Wave of AI” and “what AI was meant to be.” The company has since gone all-in on Agentforce, hiring 1,000 dedicated Agentforce sales personnel in November.

CEO Marc Benioff has been vocal in his comparisons of Agentforce to Microsoft’s Copilot AI, saying Microsoft “customers are left cleaning up the mess” and that Copilot is “more like Clippy 2.0.”

I would just say I’ve never been more excited about anything at Salesforce, maybe in my career.

This is what AI was meant to be. Just yesterday, I was reading feedback from a customer who had just turned it on and they were like, “This must be witchcraft. This is crazy what’s happening with my customers now.” And I am really excited about this. I think this is going to change companies forever. I think it’s going to change software forever. And I think it’ll change Salesforce forever.

Saleforce’s continued realignment underscores just how important Agentforce and its AI efforts are to the company.

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