**A Tale of Two AI Firms**

Tuesday saw contrasting fortunes for two AI giants. On one hand, Microsoft’s stock took a tumble amid reports—since denied by the company—that it had lowered its AI sales targets due to sluggish customer demand. On the other hand, rival Salesforce experienced a share price lift following the release of its quarterly results, which revealed significant momentum in its Agentforce platform.

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**Salesforce Q3 Fiscal 2026 Highlights**

For Q3 fiscal 2026, Salesforce reported earnings of $2.09 billion, up 37% year-over-year, on revenues that grew nine percent to $10.9 billion. Notably, Agentforce and Data 360 achieved $1.4 billion in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for the quarter, marking a 114% increase year-over-year. Within that figure, Agentforce ARR alone hit approximately $540 million, soaring 330% year-over-year.

More than 70% of Salesforce’s top 100 wins included five or more cloud products, highlighting broad adoption across its suite.

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**Revenue Breakdown by Product Line – Q3**

– Agentforce Sales: $2.3 billion, up 8% year-over-year (constant currency)
– Agentforce Service: $2.5 billion, also up 8%
– Agentforce 360 Platform, Slack, and Other: $2.2 billion, up 19%
– Agentforce Marketing and Agentforce Commerce: $1.4 billion, up 1%
– Agentforce Integration and Agentforce Analytics: $1.4 billion, up 6%

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**Performance and Customer Adoption**

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff commented on the quarter:
*“We had strong performance across Agentforce Service, Agentforce Sales, and Slack. It’s really a hat trick for Salesforce, with large customers saying, ‘Let us show you what we’re doing in Service, Sales, and Slack.’ It’s a ‘Wow!’ experience right now.”*

Regarding Agentforce use cases, there are now 18,500 examples at some stage of implementation, with 9,500 being paid deals. This is a significant increase from Q2, which had 12,500 overall Agentforce deals and around 6,000 paid deals.

Benioff added:
*“We all know that the speed of innovation over the last three years has far exceeded the speed of customer adoption, but that is changing. At Dreamforce, customers are saying, ‘Yes, I’m going to use this now.’ They are deploying customer agents, employee agents, omni-channel supervisors, harmonizing and federating data, and upgrading applications.”*

Customers actively using Agentforce have jumped 70% quarter-over-quarter. Over 50% of new Agentforce bookings and 50% of Data 360 bookings came from existing customers expanding their investments — a sign of deepening adoption.

Data 360 continues to accelerate as the foundation for every Agentforce deployment.

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**Other Key Topics from the Post-Results Call**

**Pricing for the Agentic Age:**
Benioff explained Salesforce’s approach to pricing, noting the introduction of what they call the Agentic Enterprise License Agreement. Originally, pricing was expected to be usage- or transaction-based, but customer demand has pushed Salesforce to offer more flexible and enterprise-wide licensing models.

**$8 Billion Informatica Acquisition:**
Benioff is optimistic about the potential of the Informatica acquisition.
*“During due diligence, we saw a lot of promising tech in their labs. Combining Informatica with Data 360 and MuleSoft takes us to a new level in harmonization, integration, and federation of data,”* he said.
He estimates the combined opportunity could reach about a $10 billion business next year, delivering AI-powered intelligence, accuracy, and reliability—especially in reducing hallucinations and adding context to AI outputs.

**‘Divorce’ from Veeva and Life Sciences Cloud Growth:**
Benioff took a jab at Salesforce partner-turned-rival Veeva:
*“They decided to become our competitor, and we’re taking market share from them. They even mentioned losing deals to us in their earnings call, but they haven’t yet seen the full impact of our gains.”*
Salesforce’s Life Sciences Cloud now boasts over 120 industry leaders, including five of the top 20 pharma companies. This momentum is expected to continue expanding across the sector.

**U.S. Public Sector Opportunity:**
Benioff shared insights from recent meetings in Washington, D.C., with senior government officials, including the Treasury Secretary.
He highlighted Salesforce’s growing role in helping major agencies re-automate and modernize their workflows. Notable examples include:
– The U.S. Air Force and Army running critical workflows on Salesforce
– Over 120 apps running at Veterans Affairs, significantly improving veteran services
– The IRS automating up to 98% of manual activities in its Office of the Chief Counsel, reducing case opening times from 10 days to 30 minutes, and saving an estimated 500,000 minutes annually through legacy system retirements

Salesforce’s Agentforce will further optimize and accelerate processes at the IRS and beyond.

**Addressing the MIT Report on AI ROI:**
Benioff referenced a recent MIT report claiming 95% of AI projects fail to deliver ROI. He explained:
*“Many customers initially tried building their own AI models and toolkits, with limited success. The real value now comes from delivering AI-powered customer agents through platforms like Agentforce.”*

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**My Take**

Salesforce delivered a strong quarter, countering much of the investor skepticism around the pace of Agentforce adoption. While there is undoubtedly a long road ahead, the trajectory is clear—Agentforce adoption is heading strongly upward.

The increasing variety of use cases further strengthens the business case for enterprises hesitant or cautious about diving into AI-driven platforms.

Onwards!
https://diginomica.com/agentforce-users-now-number-18500-salesforce-turns-109-billlon-quarter