- Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Fortune Magazine the company is making a "hard pivot" to AI agents.
- Saleforce's Agentforce platform enables users to create custom AI agents for customer interaction.
- Benioff said the shift comes as he expects AI agents to be key to the next wave of AI.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has a plan to get ahead in the age of artificial intelligence: AI agents.
In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, Benioff discussed Salesforce's "hard pivot" to Agentforce, which enables users to build custom AI agents tailored to their needs that can interact directly with customers. The AI agents are meant to be more advanced than AI chatbots and can be used with other Salesforce products, which include customer relationship management software and apps.
When Benioff co-founded Salesforce in 1999, it was a major disruptor in the business software industry. "This is the next big transformation," he told Fortune.
Benioff believes agents are the next big thing in AI. He told the outlet, "We have to pivot the whole company to agents."
During the interview with Fortune, he referenced the 1997 book "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" and the "beginner's mind," saying, "You have to start at the beginning and think it all the way through."
The billionaire also said he first realized how much AI would change everything about a decade ago.
"I was like, 'Oh, fuck, AI is going to take over the world,'" Benioff told the magazine. "I need to hit the accelerator pedal — and Salesforce was about 10 times smaller."
Salesforce has already rolled out Agentforce to some of its clients for testing. During the company's Q2 earnings call last week, Benioff said it has so far been well received.
"We're still going to have humans in our companies, but we're also going to have these agents," Benioff said during the call. "These agents don't require a conversational prompt to take action. You can do advanced planning, reasoning with minimal human input."
Agentforce is set for a full launch in October but will also be on display at Salesforce's conference, Dreamforce, in San Francisco starting September 17.
"It's not going to say, 'Welcome to Dreamforce'—it's going to be 'Welcome to Agentforce,'" Benioff told Fortune.