Salesforce aims to shake off the "AI laggard" label, investing $15 billion to strengthen its AI strategy

According to Zhitong Finance APP, Salesforce (CRM.US), the American cloud software giant focused on customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced on Monday a grand "Artificial Intelligence Agent" investment plan to invest up to $15 billion in San Francisco over the next five years. This American software industry leader, labeled as an "AI laggard" by market investors, is striving to layout generative AI application software and AI agents, aiming to "devour the world" like OpenAI and Microsoft rather than being "devoured by AI." The company's latest initiative includes launching a new large-scale AI project incubation center—AI Incubator Hub—in a large park in San Francisco, aiming to comprehensively expand high-quality workforce development and AI training programs, and support global enterprise clients in adopting enterprise AI agents driven by breakthrough AI technology (Agentic Enterprise Model). The company previously stated before its annual conference that the Dreamforce large project is expected to bring $130 million in revenue to San Francisco and create 35,000 local jobs; this year's Salesforce conference will be held in San Francisco from October 14 to 16, expecting nearly 50,000 attendees. From capital investment, product roadmap to mergers and acquisitions integration, Salesforce's management has made a firm decision to bet on generative AI application software and "AI agents," positioning "AI application leader" as a strategic goal. For example, Salesforce's Agentforce 360, which recently launched globally, is positioned as an "enterprise-level AI agent application platform" that unifies "human + AI Agent + data" into a single "trusted system." Additionally, Salesforce signed a final agreement to acquire Informatica for about $8 billion in May this year (focusing on data integration/master data management/AI governance), and announced the acquisition of Apromore (focusing on process intelligence/Process Mining) last week, forming a closed loop with Salesforce's AI automation orchestration based on Agentforce. However, whether it can maintain its position as an AI application leader still depends on converting large-scale adoption on the enterprise side into verifiable revenue and operational efficiency dividends in the next 12-24 months. Undoubtedly, the current market remains cautious about Salesforce's AI monetization pace, as evidenced by Salesforce's stock price being in a weak phase for most of this year, dropping over 30% while the Nasdaq 100 index has continued its bull market. From the current technological trajectory, the development direction of AI application software is focused on "generative AI application software" (such as DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Sora, and Claude launched by Anthropic, which are popular AI applications globally), and based on generative AI, AI functions are shifting from a chatbox-style Q&A to "AI agents that autonomously execute various tedious and complex tasks." In terms of specific AI application logic, the future of killer generative AI applications covering B-end or C-end industries is likely to experience an explosive growth, which is why global funds have been pouring into some core software stocks on a large scale since 2024. The urgent demand from enterprises to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs has recently greatly promoted the widespread application of two core categories of AI application software—generative AI applications and AI agents. Especially represented by OpenAI Deep Research and Manus, AI agents can automate repetitive tasks, perform big data analysis and summarization based on incredibly powerful AI large models, and provide real-time monitoring insights and reports, as well as make appropriate decisions in extremely complex situations in a very short time, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. AI agents can also efficiently participate in all stages of large projects across various fields globally, from blueprint planning to implementation, significantly accelerating project progress. Since 2024, benefiting from the accelerated expansion trend of market demand for artificial intelligence application software, advertising marketing service provider APPlovin, focusing on the "AI + digital advertising" field, and Palantir, a leader in "AI + data analysis," have both announced exceptionally strong performance data and future performance outlooks this year. This indicates that not only is the demand for AI computing infrastructure, represented by NVIDIA AI GPUs, incredibly strong, but the demand for AI application software, especially enterprise-level AI application software that can comprehensively enhance operational efficiency, is also robust and rapidly penetrating various industries