Salesforce reduces workforce by 4,000, citing advancements in AI, according to CEO
Salesforce, the global leader in customer relationship management, has made a significant shift in its customer support operations by replacing 4,000 human roles with AI agents. This move, announced by CEO Marc Benioff, is part of a larger trend in the technology sector, spurred by the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot late last year.
The impact of this transition is evident in Salesforce's headcount, which has reduced from 9,000 to 5,000. Currently, half of customer interactions are managed by AI agents, while the remaining half is handled by human agents. A year ago, a customer support interaction with Salesforce would have involved 9,000 people globally.
The AI technology, named Agentforce, has not only reduced the number of support cases Salesforce handles but also expanded its offerings. Salesforce now provides AI-powered tools like Agentforce to its customers and other companies, deploying help.agentforce.com at the start of the year.
Benioff previously stated that AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce, and it has been deployed in various areas, including engineering, coding, and customer service tasks. This shift has allowed hundreds of Salesforce employees to be redeployed to other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success.
The adoption of Agentforce has positioned Salesforce to compete directly with ServiceNow in IT service management. According to Benioff, Agentforce has over 6,000 paying customers, generating around $100 million in annual recurring revenue. However, no specific companies or institutions for negotiations regarding Agentforce were mentioned.
Despite the significant changes, Benioff does not view managing a workforce that combines humans and AI agents as a nightmarish future. He was photographed during a Bloomberg West television interview at the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco, California, and at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
It's worth noting that Salesforce's stock (ticker CRM) has seen a decrease in price, a common occurrence in the tech sector during periods of significant change. Meanwhile, the NVIDIA CEO is in talks with the Trump administration about selling a chip called Blackwell to China, a separate development in the tech industry.
This report was contributed to by FOX Business' Aislinn Murphy.
