Salesforce Shares Surge After Outperforming Wall Street Estimates and Embracing AI
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Shares in Salesforce rose after the software company beat Wall Street estimates for its second quarter. Strategists say it’s thanks to an embrace of artificial intelligence.
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CNBCSalesforce came through in the clutch. The enterprise software giant on Wednesday delivered better-than-expected results for its fiscal second quarter and issued guidance for the current period that makes good on the company's pledge to reaccelerate into the end of the year. The one-two punch not only validates the once-struggling stock's recent resurgence. It is also sending shares up 12% in extended trading, reaching levels last seen in late January — before the market's concerns about artificial intelligence displacing traditional software vendors reached a fever pitch and sent their stocks into a tailspin.
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Benioff also said that Salesforce's expanding partnership with Anthropic offers a tangible example of his thesis. The companies unveiled "Claudeforce" on Wednesday, a plugin allowing salespeople to use Anthropic's Claude to tap customer data stored in Salesforce and perform tasks such as composing emails and updating records.
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Earlier this year, investors feared that increasingly capable AI models could allow businesses to accomplish more with fewer traditional software subscriptions, undermining the industry's pricing model. Wall Street also worried that companies could use AI to create the software tools they are paying for. Salesforce shares were down 22% this year through Wednesday's close. If the stock were to close on Thursday where it is trading in the after-hours session, a big chunk of that year-to-date decline would disappear.
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He added, "Nine out of the 10 top AI companies .... use Salesforce and Slack. Their spend [in the quarter represented] 435% year-over-year growth. Frontier models depend on CRM. They don't replace it." Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for Agentforce also continues to grow, reaching $1.5 billion in the quarter. That is up from $1.2 billion in the first quarter and $800 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. This sequential acceleration is an encouraging sign for the Agentforce product, which allows customers to build AI "agents" that operate within its applications and can autonomously perform tasks, such as resolving a customer service case or qualifying a sales lead. Combined with Data 360, the company's cloud unit, ARR is nearly $3.9 billion, representing 210% year-over-year growth.
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For the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce said adjusted earning will be between $3.42 and $3.44 per share, with $11.42 billion to $11.50 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had anticipated $3.38 in adjusted EPS and $11.41 billion in revenue.
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01 CNBC It's a much better picture for Salesforce on Wednesday night, and our patience with the stock is being rewarded. In particular, we're thrilled to see the third-quarter guidance show that management's promise that revenue would accelerate in the second half of its fiscal year is on track. "This ‘SaaSpocalypse’ narrative has been such nonsense," Benioff told Jim Cramer on "Mad Money." "Skeptics said seats would decline, and Agentforce Sales and Service and Slack all grew seats year over year. Skeptics said customers are going to leave, and attrition is near its lowest level ever. ...
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02 MarketWatch Its stock CRM climbed over 11% in premarket trading on Thursday, having posted financial results after Wednesday’s close.
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- marketwatch
- cnbc