Marc Benioff delivered a bold declaration during Salesforce, Inc‘s (NYSE:CRM) quarterly earnings call, arguing that the traditional SaaS model is becoming obsolete.
"It's not the end of software," Benioff said. "It's the end of software that makes humans do all the work."
That line may end up becoming one of the defining quotes of this earnings season, as AI agents increasingly replace human-driven workflows across enterprise software.
Salesforce Is Betting On Autonomous Software
Salesforce is no longer pitching AI as merely an add-on feature to existing software products. Nowadays, the company is framing AI agents as the next evolution of enterprise software itself.
Benioff repeatedly described a future where AI agents autonomously handle customer service, lead qualification, workflow automation and internal collaboration.
"Software that listens. Software that understands. Software that can actually do," he said.
Salesforce's Agentforce platform now sits at the center of that strategy. It has already become an $800 million business, while Salesforce processed 28.6 trillion AI tokens during the quarter — up 152% sequentially.
Management also highlighted that Agentforce Sales autonomously worked 220,000 leads during the quarter, generating $42 million in pipeline.
Meanwhile, Agentforce Service has already handled millions of customer support inquiries autonomously.
Salesforce Thinks AI Agents Become The New Interface
The broader implication of Benioff's comments is striking.
For decades, enterprise software largely revolved around humans manually operating applications through dashboards, menus and workflows. Salesforce now appears to believe AI agents themselves become the primary interface.
That vision extends beyond Salesforce applications into Slack, APIs and external systems. "In two years, there'll be more agents using Slack than people," Benioff predicted.
Whether that prediction proves accurate or not, the company is clearly attempting to position itself at the center of what it calls the "agentic enterprise" era.
And while Wall Street remains divided on how quickly AI agents will materially reshape enterprise software, Salesforce's earnings call made one thing very clear:
Benioff believes the SaaS era is evolving into something far more autonomous.
Photo: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock
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