Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce Inc., disclosed today that between 30 and 50 percent of his company’s labor is now done by artificial intelligence. This is one of the clearest illustrations to far of how AI is changing how big businesses operate.
According to Benioff, who was interviewed on Bloomberg’s “The Circuit with Emily Chang,” the automation has allowed the San Francisco-based company to cut staff members in both customer service and software development areas. As the influence of AI on the workplace grows across industries, business leaders are increasingly praising the technology’s potential to replace human labor.
AI Outperforms At An Enterprise Level
According to Benioff, significant companies like Walt Disney Co. are using Salesforce’s AI-powered customer support solution, which has a 93% accuracy rate. The system’s ability to handle customer support responsibilities on its own marks a change from AI systems that can only answer questions to ones that can carry out intricate operations on their own.
“We all need to embrace the concept that AI can perform tasks we previously handled,” Benioff stated during the interview. “This allows us to transition to more valuable work.”
The numbers support assertions made by other IT behemoths. According to officials at Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp., AI produces about 30% of new software code for a variety of projects. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that 30% of the company’s current programming code is produced by artificial intelligence.
Workforce Transformation Quickens
The automation is part of a larger workplace change that Salesforce has thoroughly researched. According to a business survey of 200 HR leaders worldwide, as AI use grows, one in four employees will be forced to change employment. While company usage of these technologies is predicted to increase by 327% over the next two years, the research indicates that the adoption of AI agents might increase productivity by 30%.
Over 80% of HR directors already have plans to retrain employees for the AI future, with the majority placing a strong emphasis on soft skills like teamwork and connection building. Although 80% of HR directors anticipate that most workforces will consist of a combination of human and AI workers within five years, almost 85% of them think their organizations have not yet completely embraced AI agents.
Evolution Of Platform Strategies
Salesforce has made its Agentforce platform, which was introduced in 2024, the focal point of this change. The solution deploys autonomous agents across corporate functions using what the company refers to as the Atlas reasoning engine. The platform is an example of Salesforce’s development from its innovation in cloud-based customer management in the 2000s to integrating AI into all of its products.
Benioff echoed the claim that AI enhances rather than merely replaces human capabilities when he stated, “This allows us to transition to more valuable work,”