Salesforce Inc. raised its annual sales forecast, suggesting that its AI agent product is on a path to contribute significant revenue.
For the year ending in January 2026, the company said revenue will be $41 billion to $41.3 billion, compared with an earlier forecast of $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion.
Leading technology platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Corp. and ServiceNow Inc. are competing to offer AI agents — software that can complete tasks such as customer service without needing direction from a person. Salesforce launched its “Agentforce” product in October and is aiming for broad adoption among its customers.
Still, investors are waiting to see a more significant revenue contribution from Agentforce. The company said in a statement Wednesday that it closed more than 4,000 paid deals for the product.
Earlier this week, the San Francisco-based company announced it would spend about $8 billion to buy Informatica, which focuses on organizing and managing data in the cloud. AI implementation has been slowed in large companies because information is scattered and needs to be pulled together from many areas.
Annual recurring revenue for Salesforce’s division that includes data organization and AI crossed $1 billion, the company said. That’s up from $900 million in the previous quarter.
“Data Cloud and AI recurring sales of over $1 billion also points to consistent AI demand and may explain the only slight expansion in adjusted operating margin,” Anurag Rana, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note after the results.
The Informatica deal fits Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff’s longtime strategy to use acquisitions as a way to spur revenue growth. Benioff had paused that effort for the past few years under pressure from activist investors to cut expenses and improve profitability. Should the purchase be completed, it would be Salesforce’s biggest deal since it acquired Slack for about $27.7 billion in 2021.
The company’s shares were little changed in extended trading after closing at $276.03. The stock was down 18% this year through Wednesday’s close, making it among the worst performing technology stocks in the S&P 500 Index.
Fiscal first-quarter revenue increased about 8% to $9.8 billion. Remaining performance obligations, a measure of bookings, were $60.9 billion. Profit, excluding some items, was $2.58 per share. All those metrics exceeded Wall Street estimates.
As the imposition of US tariffs and other changing government policy roiled businesses over recent weeks, investors have debated how the swings will affect the software industry, which doesn’t directly face import taxes. Firms such as Microsoft have reported that customer behavior hasn’t been noticeably impacted while others like Workday Inc. have referenced an “uncertain environment.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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