Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Wednesday it's time to put fears of a "SaaSpocalypse" to rest after the company's latest earnings report.
"This SaaSpocalypse narrative has been such nonsense," Benioff told Jim Cramer on CNBC's "Mad Money." "Frontier models depend on CRM. They don't replace it."
Salesforce shares surged more than 12% after the enterprise software giant delivered a strong quarter and issued better-than-expected guidance. Best known for its customer relationship management software, Salesforce also owns workplace messaging service Slack and data analytics platform Tableau. Salesforce is a holding in Cramer's Charitable Trust, the portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Club.
Benioff said the numbers show that AI is strengthening rather than cannibalizing the business, pointing to the very companies once viewed as a threat to traditional software-as-a-service, or SaaS. According to Benioff, nine of the 10 leading artificial intelligence companies use Salesforce and Slack, with spending on the platforms surging 435% from a year ago.
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.
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.
Rather than replacing Salesforce, Benioff argued AI models like Claude rely on the customer data, business context and workflows housed on Salesforce's platform, positioning his company as a foundation for AI agents. "Salesforce is first and foremost in the data business," the CEO said. "These AI models need this level of intelligence, security and controls for users."
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