Marc Benioff says humans are already working alongside AI agents

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has repeatedly criticized Microsoft Copilot.

The future is here and it’s humans working alongside robots, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Salesforce reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, beating revenue expectations and sending the stock price up around 10% as of market close on Wednesday.

During the earnings call, Benioff made it clear he’s all in on Agentforce, the company’s service that clients can use to build AI-powered agents. AI agents, which can operate computers and complete tasks that might otherwise require human hands, have been touted by some as the next big thing in generative AI.

Benioff seems to agree.

Agentforce became generally available in late October and allows companies to create their own custom AI agents. Benioff said the company delivered 200 deals in that first week and that he expects demand for AI agents to increase, calling Salesforce the “largest supplier of digital labor.”

Benioff said some Salesforce clients already building out their digital labor force include FedEx, Adecco, Accenture, Ace Hardware, IBM, and RBC Wealth Managements.

Benioff said that in addition to humans working alongside AI agents, they’ll soon be working alongside robots as well.

“On top of this agentic layer, we’ll soon see a robotic layer as well where these agents will manifest into robots,” he said, adding, “These agents are not tools. They are becoming collaborators.”

Benioff has previously said he thought the “upper limits” of large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT, had been reached and that the future was AI agents.

Salesforce isn’t the only tech company focusing on agents. Microsoft helps customers create agents through its AI studio, Copilot. Meta is working on agents, Google its making AI agents with Gemini, and Bloomberg recently reported OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, plans to launch AI agents next year.

Benioff also said on the earnings call that the rise in digital labor means “productivity is no longer tied to workforce growth, but to this intelligent technology that can be scaled without limits.”

“This isn’t just some far off future,” he added, “It’s happening right now.”