Benioff Slams 'SaaSpocalypse' Fears, Says Apps Are Growing Despite AI
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has spoken out against fears that AI will replace customer relationship management (CRM) software and apps. During Salesforce's latest quarterly earnings call, he pointed to results from the vendor's fiscal quarter as proof that CRM and software-as-a-service can not only survive but thrive in the age of artificial intelligence.
The San Francisco-based company saw agentic use of its applications through Model Context Protocol (MCP) and command-line interface (CLI) calls surge sixfold, with Benioff stating 'We're told agents accessing our system would kill apps, well, actually, usage is exploding.'
Beneath the surface, Benioff sees a deepening partnership between Salesforce and AI startups. The company has announced an expanded strategic partnership with Claude maker Anthropic under the so-called 'Claudeforce' partnership, which combines Claude reasoning and Salesforce's enterprise harness.
This collaboration is particularly notable as it allows customers to see value that was previously trapped within their systems become un-trapped through AI insights. Moreover, Benioff emphasized the importance of providing flexibility in pricing, citing that 'customers want to buy and price in different ways.'