Salesforce Crushes Q3 Earnings, Raises Revenue Forecast Amid SaaSpocalypse Fears

Salesforce's stock price surged by about 12% in premarket trading on Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and raised its annual revenue forecast.

The revised forecast puts Salesforce's fiscal 2027 revenue between $46.1 billion and $46.4 billion, up from a previous estimate of $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the partnership with Anthropic is 'completely exciting' and will allow for AI models to be integrated into its platform, including Claudeforce, a plug-in that brings Salesforce capabilities into Anthropic's Claude AI models.

The integration includes 37 pre-built sales skills, allowing users to compose emails, update records, and perform other actions within Salesforce. The partnership could provide Salesforce with an important way to demonstrate that AI is more complementary to its software than destructive to it.

Benioff pushed back against the 'SaaSpocalypse' narrative, saying that frontier models depend on CRM (customer relationship management) systems like Salesforce and don't replace them.