Salesforce Stock Jumps 20% on Q2 Earnings, Anthropic Partnership

Salesforce's stock price surged by over 20% on Thursday after the company released its Q2 earnings report, which exceeded analyst expectations. The software giant generated $11.35 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 11% increase from the same period last year.

The company also announced a deeper collaboration with AI firm Anthropic, which has seen its valuation climb to $965 billion. As part of this partnership, Salesforce unveiled 'Claudeforce,' a plugin that integrates Anthropic's Claude chatbot into its customer relationship management workflows.

CEO Marc Benioff emphasized that the company's AI investments are already translating into tangible customer wins and higher retention rates, pushing back against concerns that generative AI might disrupt the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model. The partnership with Anthropic has resulted in a $2.6 billion gain for Salesforce.

The stock's performance lifted sentiment across the software sector, with companies such as Adobe and Palantir seeing gains. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF also advanced roughly 5%.