Salesforce AI Partnerships Expand, Stock Underperforming

Salesforce's stock (NYSE:CRM) has been under pressure through much of this year, down 24.77% as the company looks to shift the narrative, accelerating its AI initiatives. Despite strategic partnerships and product launches aimed at solidifying its position, the stock's performance reflects ongoing market apprehension.

Teaming up with Stripe and OpenAI for checkout integration, an expanded partnership with Anthropic, and the ability to access Agentforce 360 directly from ChatGPT, are all examples of the push today.

Looking a little deeper. A significant move includes partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, integrating their large language models (LLMs) into the Einstein 1 Platform.

This collaboration aims to boost productivity across various sectors, including sales, service, marketing, commerce, and code development, while ensuring data privacy and compliance. The integration allows customers to select from various Claude models, such as Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, and Claude 3 Haiku, to enhance efficiency and personalization across operations.

Further solidifying its AI capabilities, Salesforce launched Agentforce 360, a platform designed to automate routine tasks across its cloud-based tools. Agentforce 360 has been deployed globally, connecting humans, AI agents, and data on a single system. A key feature is Agentforce Voice, which enables AI agents to handle voice calls, providing a seamless customer experience. 

Slack as an “Agentic OS”

Slack is also emerging as a central component of Salesforce's AI strategy, rebranded as an “agentic OS.” This integration allows direct access to Salesforce CRM data within Slack, enabling employees to complete tasks through conversational interaction with AI agents.

New features include a Channel Expert AI agent for continuous support within Slack channels and an upgraded Slackbot capable of summarizing threads, drafting updates, and generating to-do lists.

Demonstrating its commitment to AI innovation and community support, Salesforce announced a $15 billion investment in San Francisco over the next five years. This investment will fund a new AI incubator hub and support businesses in adopting AI agents, aiming to accelerate AI adoption and strengthen its competitiveness in the AI sector.

Price Targets

Despite these efforts, Salesforce faces challenges. Morgan Stanley analysts noted that Agentforce revenue has been “modest” so far, although they maintain the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock. The market is closely watching whether these AI initiatives will translate into substantial revenue growth and improved profitability.

The coming months will be critical for Salesforce as it seeks to demonstrate the tangible benefits of its AI investments. The company's ability to integrate AI effectively into its core offerings and drive revenue growth will be key to regaining investor confidence. Today's price movement underscores the market's cautious optimism, highlighting the need for concrete results to justify the significant investments being made in AI.