In a significant expansion of its artificial intelligence initiatives, Salesforce plans to hire 2,000 salespeople focused on AI products, doubling its previously announced hiring target, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said Tuesday.
Speaking at a company event in San Francisco, Benioff revealed strong interest in the positions, noting they had already received 9,000 referrals for the openings. The move comes as the cloud software provider seeks to capitalize on the growing demand for AI technologies among sales, marketing, and customer service professionals.
The company also announced that its next-generation Agentforce technology, designed to handle complex queries within its Slack platform, will launch in February 2025. The system will leverage comprehensive data access to provide enhanced AI capabilities.
This hiring push marks a strategic shift for Salesforce, coming nearly two years after the company cut more than 7,000 jobs in response to economic conditions. Company filings show that as of January 31, 2024, Salesforce’s workforce stood at 72,682, representing a slight decline of about 1% from two years prior.
Benioff highlighted improvements in the company’s AI-powered customer support system, which now handles 32,000 conversations weekly. The system has reduced human escalations from 10,000 to 5,000 cases, demonstrating increased efficiency. The company has also implemented an experimental AI agent on its homepage to field product inquiries.
In a competitive jab at Microsoft’s Copilot AI tools, Benioff claimed difficulty in locating Microsoft’s automated customer support features. Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer for AI at work, Jared Spataro, responded by defending their implementation, citing improvements in case resolution speed and sales performance, including an 11.5% faster case resolution rate and 9.4% higher revenue per seller.
