Salesforce opens the age of ‘Agentic Enterprise’ amid fastest innovation cycle in its history

It’s been almost one year since Salesforce introduced its Agentforce technology to the world, but in that short time the company says it has already begun to reshape how the future workforce, marketing, customer journeys and CX will operate at scale.

The company’s latest release, Agentforce 360, aims to bridge what Salesforce chair and CEO Marc Benioff calls the “agentic divide” - connecting human employees with AI agents to supercharge business systems at every stage.

Speaking during the opening keynote of Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco, Benioff said Agentforce 360 would unleash a new model of productivity - one grounded in data, governance and measurable impact - and push innovation faster than any technology in the company’s history.

“We didn’t really have the ability to envision how much progress we would make a year ago, but it’s gone so fast,” Benioff said. “A year ago, Agentforce was a product. Now it’s a platform. It’s what everything Salesforce has to offer. I think the demonstrations are incredibly compelling.”

Benioff said Salesforce has entered a phase where the pace of innovation has surpassed even customer adoption. “This is the moment where this technology innovation is outstripping customer adoption. Our job is to get those customers into adoption mode,” he said.

One of those customers is global snacks giant PepsiCo, which has embraced agentic AI at scale and plans to be “agentic AI-first” by the end of 2026.

Athina Kanioura, PepsiCo’s executive vice president and chief strategy and transformation officer, told attendees that PepsiCo’s transformation will touch every part of the company - connecting strategy, innovation and operations through Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 platform.

“We will be agentic in every part of the business by the end of 2026,” Kanioura said. “We are the first company which will be agentic AI-first by the end of 2026 in every part of the business - connecting all operations, connecting all our processes, the way we think of the business and strategise the business, the way we do innovation, commercialisation, execution, and making sure that every employee in the company has a sales and growth mindset. We are all about profitable growth.”

Innovation from the top

Across the opening day of Dreamforce 2025, some of the world’s biggest brands said this was not a time to be complacent - and that innovation must start from the top.

David Walmsley, chief digital and technology officer at Pandora, described this new customer environment as a make or break moment “It’s a massive strategic play for us. It’s not a new project or a new initiative - it is the future. This is where our business is heading.

“The CEO needs to lead the AI revolution inside an organisation. Absolutely, it starts at the top, because it has to change every part of the organisation. For us, that starts with the brand. It starts with the customer and customer engagement. That’s why we’re so excited about this journey." 

Walmsley said around 24% of Pandora's business was online, but that 98% of our customer relationships start in the digital space. He described the company’s push towards agentic AI as beginning on a new era. 

“This is the internet again, this is electricity. It’s that important to us. But change has to start at the top.”

Dell Technologies chair and CEO Michael Dell went further, saying that brands that fail to act now do so at their own peril.

“If we don’t really get on this, a new company is going to come along and it’s going to put us out of business,” Dell said. “I think we all woke up around November of 2022 and saw these incredible models, and it really created an opportunity to unlock the power of all the dark data that exists in the world.”

Benioff echoed that sentiment, noting that the pace of innovation has reached a level few could have predicted - and that innovation itself has become the new competitive pressure.

“We’re in a moment in AI where we can’t believe the rate of change and innovation. I’m sure everybody wakes up and goes, wow, that’s amazing. This is unbelievable. Nvidia sold who to what and who gave what to whom. It’s beyond our expectation.”

He added that even amid rapid change, Salesforce remains focused on listening closely to customers. “We are all just listening to the customer more deeply, because the answers remain with the customers - and that’s who’s guiding us.”

Benioff said the company is investing heavily in its Agentforce platform and moving faster than it ever has before. “We’re investing huge amounts in Agentforce, huge amounts. But listen to this - we have gone faster with Agentforce than we have with any other technology we’ve created,” he said.

“Now you’re going to see a new Agentforce - one built on every app we make. One with voice, one that is predictable and accurate, one that is intelligent and with context.”

And context, he said, is everything. “If you don’t have your data, you don’t have your context. You need that deep data integration, and that is something we have learned.”

Benioff said the vision behind Agentforce 360, unveiled during the keynote, is to connect humans, agents and data on one trusted platform. “Agentforce 360 connects humans, agents and data on one trusted platform, helping every employee and every company achieve more than they ever thought possible,” he said.

The week-long conference, drawing around 50,000 people, sets the stage for the next chapter of enterprise AI. Salesforce’s message is simple but ambitious: AI won’t replace people - it will work alongside them. And the company is staking its reputation, and billions of dollars, on making that happen.

A structural shift

Co-founder Parker Harris called it “the biggest transition in technology” of his career, predicting that by 2029, 40% of the work in the Fortune 1000 will be done by AI. It’s a headline figure, but also a signal that Salesforce sees AI not as a background tool, but as a structural shift in how businesses operate.

At the heart of that shift is Agentforce 360 - a platform Salesforce describes as the culmination of a year of development and four major releases. It unites the company’s core ecosystem - the Agentforce 360 Platform, Data 360, Customer 360 and Slack - into a single system built for what Salesforce calls the Agentic Enterprise: a model where AI agents and humans collaborate in real time.

Salesforce said the technology is already deployed across 12,000 customers, including Reddit, OpenTable and Adecco. The company claims early adopters are seeing measurable results - fewer support cases, faster resolution times and greater productivity as AI agents take on routine, repeatable tasks.

Benioff said the goal is to build a new model of productivity, grounded in trusted data, strong governance and measurable impact. “AI isn’t here to replace people,” he said. “It’s here to elevate them - to make every employee a multiplier.”

The announcements also underscore Salesforce’s renewed commitment to its home city, with the company unveiling a US$15 billion investment over the next five years to reinforce San Francisco’s position as what Benioff calls “the world’s AI capital.” The plan includes a new AI Incubator Hub on Salesforce’s downtown campus, expanded workforce training programs and new initiatives to help companies transition into Agentic Enterprises.

Now in its 23rd year, Dreamforce remains one of the world’s largest and most influential technology events.