Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22nd, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Salesforce is accelerating its use of artificial intelligence in automating workloads, according to CEO Marc Benioff.
“All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, noting that the technology currently accounts for about 30% to 50% of the company’s work.
Technology companies are hunting for new ways to trim costs, boost efficiencies and transform their workforce with the help of AI.
The aftershocks have already hit the tech industry, with the software giant cutting over 1,000 positions earlier this year as it restructured around AI.
Other technology companies have made similar moves, including cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike.
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the company has shrunk its headcount by 40% due in part to AI investment, while Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the e-commerce giant will use AI to reduce roles.
Benioff called the rise of AI in the workforce a “digital labor revolution,” estimating that the software company has reached about 93% accuracy with the technology.
“It’s pretty good,” he said, but it’s not “realistic” to hit 100%. He added that other vendors are at “much lower levels because they don’t have as much data and metadata” to build higher accuracy.
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