CEO Benioff says Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell its AI products

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Tuesday that 2,000 people will be hired to sell artificial intelligence software to customers, double the number the company planned to add a month ago.

The cloud software company, which targets sales reps, marketers and customer service agents, is among many tech companies hoping to boost revenue with generative artificial intelligence features.

“We’re adding a few thousand more sellers to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We already have 9,000 applications for the 2,000 positions we have open. It’s amazing.”

Benioff said last month Bloomberg It said it plans to hire 1,000 salespeople focused on AI.

This was reported by Salesforce on Tuesday second generation Agentforce, the technology that creates and runs AI agents, will be available to customers in February 2025. Agentforce will be able to solve complex questions in Salesforce’s Slack communication app based on all available data.

Salesforce is beefing up its AI sales team nearly two years after announcing it quit the job more than 7,000 employees to better reflect economic conditions. As of January 31, 2024, the number of employees decreased by about 1% from two years ago and amounted to 72,682 people. documents.

Benioff said Salesforce’s homepage now features an experimental AI agent that can answer user queries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers who need help can make a chat-based request help page 32,000 conversations per week. Benioff said that about 5,000 people are transferred to humans as a result of current AI capabilities, down from 10,000 previously.

Microsoft Copilot sells a line of branded artificial intelligence tools. But if you look at Microsoft’s website to see how it automates customer support, “you won’t find it,” Benioff said.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.