Salesforce Adapts to LLMs: Shifting Focus from Interface to Infrastructure

Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff believes that the company's relationship with its customers is about to undergo a significant change. In an effort to adapt to the rise of large language models (LLMs), Salesforce is shifting its focus from being a user interface to providing underlying infrastructure. This shift is expected to alter how customers interact with Salesforce and other SaaS vendors, potentially making them less visible in the process.

The company's president of Applications and Marketing, Patrick Stokes, described this change as a move away from traditional software interfaces towards more conversational interactions through APIs and command-line interfaces. This approach allows Salesforce to focus on providing the underlying platform where customers store their data, metadata, workflows, permissions, and security.

The shift is driven by the increasing popularity of LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT, which provide a more efficient and user-friendly way for employees to access applications and data. Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff believes that this trend will continue, with interfaces becoming increasingly intelligent, dynamic, and composite.

This change poses challenges for SaaS vendors, including how they measure usage and generate revenue. Analysts are also cautioning that the shift towards infrastructure-based services could lead to a decline in the visibility of individual SaaS brands. However, Salesforce's acquisition of Slack provides it with a unique advantage in this space.