Salesforce's AI Pricing Puzzle to Be Solved at Dreamforce

Salesforce has been working on a new pricing model for its AI usage, which it unveiled at an investor webinar on September 1. However, the company deferred providing any hard numbers until its Dreamforce conference, scheduled for September 16.

The market is eager to see if Salesforce's surging AI usage will translate into recurring revenue, rather than just increasing activity. On August 26, the company reported a beat on both lines and raised full-year guidance, sending shares up as much as 18% before drifting back to $259.23.

Salesforce's revenue rose 10.83% year over year to $11.345 billion, with its current remaining performance obligation growing 14% in constant currency to $33.5 billion. However, the headline EPS was flattered by a gain on strategic investments, including an unrealized mark-up on Salesforce's Anthropic stake.

The company has been working on Claudeforce, which embeds Salesforce data and 37 prebuilt sales skills inside Claude, with an open beta expected this month. The pricing model shift to outcome-based pricing could lift margins if Salesforce routes each task to the cheapest capable model, but a failed task can burn compute without producing revenue.