Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaks at the Dreamforce conference on September 17, 2024 in San Francisco.
David Paul Morris | David Paul Morris Bloomberg | Getty Images
salesperson Chief Executive Marc Benioff said on Tuesday it would hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to customers, double the number the company planned to add a month ago.
The cloud-based software company for sales representatives, marketers and customer service agents is one of many technology companies looking to boost revenue by generating artificial intelligence capabilities.
“We’re going to add thousands more salespeople to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We’ve already received 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions we’ve opened. That’s fantastic.”
Last month, Benioff told Bloomberg The company plans to hire 1,000 salespeople focused on artificial intelligence.
On Tuesday, Salesforce said second generation Agentforce technology for creating and operating artificial intelligence agents will be available to customers in February 2025.
Nearly two years ago, Salesforce announced it would lay off more than 7,000 employees to better reflect economic conditions and expand its artificial intelligence sales team. According to the data, as of January 31, 2024, the total number of employees was 72,682, a decrease of approximately 1% from two years ago Filing.
Benioff said Salesforce’s homepage now features an experimental artificial intelligence agent that can respond to user inquiries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers who need assistance can access chat-based Help page 32,000 conversations are held every week. Benioff said that due to current artificial intelligence capabilities, about 5,000 situations are being upgraded to humans, compared with the previous number of 10,000.
Microsoft has been selling a series of artificial intelligence tools under the Copilot brand. But if you check Microsoft’s website to see how it automates customer support, Benioff said, “you won’t find it.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
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