Salesforce benefits from software firm's bet on AI tools to drive growth

Salesforce's stock increased by over 5% on Thursday as investors welcomed the company's positive quarterly results and its AI-powered CRM solutions push to spur development.

In order to improve the functionality of its current products and draw in additional users, Salesforce software innovation has made significant investments to incorporate its AI technologies into platforms like its messaging app Slack.

According to Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan, Salesforce is still an underappreciated AI winner because of its unique data and early achievements in developing and using GenAI agents. Although Salesforce's software-as-a-service (SaaS) company announced better-than-expected revenue, profit, and margins in the second quarter, Wall Street remained concerned about how restrained cloud expenditure would effect the company in a challenging economic climate.

Salesforce increased its profit projection for the year ending in January 2025 as well, citing further expansion of margins as a result of last year's restructuring initiatives. The stock is trading at 24.49 times Wall Street's projected profit, while SaaS peer ServiceNow is trading at 52.11 and cloud contact center company Five9 is trading at 13.30. If premarket gains continue, Salesforce's market capitalization is expected to increase by $14 billion. At the close of business on Wednesday, the corporation was valued at $248 billion.

According to Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow, these outcomes by themselves aren't likely to spark a long-term upswing at this point. They need more catalysts for that, and they may get them with the new AI solutions that will be unveiled in October at Dreamforce. Analysts predict that the customer support platform Agentforce—which is not yet publicly available—may provide consistent growth in the upcoming quarters.