Salesforce Stock Climbs Premarket: CEO Benioff Touts 'Agentic Enterprise' Vision As AI Helps Cut 4,000 Support Roles

Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) stock rose early premarket on Wednesday, with retail sentiment toward the stock improving, as investors digested comments from CEO Marc Benioff about the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) agent deployment within the company.

While appearing on the Logan Barlett Show, Benioff confirmed that Salesforce had eliminated about 4,000 positions.“I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support. I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads,” he said.

The CEO's comments came as a reassurance after the stock received a price target cut last week on concerns about the viability of Agentforce, the company's AI agency platform. 

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward Salesforce stock improved to 'bullish' (59/100) by early Wednesday from 'bearish' a day ago, with the message volume improving to 'high' levels.

Benioff said on the podcast that was aired on Friday that the workforce reduction was made possible due to the deployment of Agentforce. The customer satisfaction (CSAT) score for the agentic layer speaking to customers was the same as that of conversations that happened through support agents, he said.

Riding on the agentic AI opportunity, Salesforce reported a first-quarter beat in late May and also raised its full-year guidance.

Salesforce stock, however, is down about 24% year-to-date (YTD).

Benioff said AI deployment has helped the company follow up on leads that would otherwise go unattended due to a lack of manpower.

“We now have an agentic sales [team], that is calling back every person that contacts us in our company, and we're doing about just for our own company more than 10,000 leads a week right now,” he said.

The AI agents have been having conversations, turning them into a pipeline, he said, adding that“our pipelines have never been fuller and a lot of it has to do with that we're feeding them with this agent capability.”

Benioff said,“I am on a mission to make Salesforce an agentic enterprise, and I think that this is what can really transform every company.”

The Koyfin-compiled consensus price target for the stock is $344.64, implying over 36% upside potential.

Last week, Citi reduced its price target for Salesforce stock to $275 from $295, citing an underwhelming demand picture, according to The Fly. The analysts at the firm stated that they would require additional data points on the AgentForce rollout and commercialization before they could become constructive. The firm has a 'Neutral' rating on the stock.

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