Latest news with #MarcBenioff
Entrepreneur
8 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
How Much Do Salesforce Employees Make? Median Salaries
Salesforce's first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday beat estimates, with revenue up 8% year-over-year to $9.83 billion. Earlier this week, the company also announced a deal to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion, its biggest acquisition since it purchased Slack for $27.1 billion in 2021. "Sometimes you have a quarter when everything is going right for you," said Salesforce CEO and Board Chair Marc Benioff, 60, in an earnings call on Wednesday, per The Wall Street Journal. According to Salesforce's 2025 proxy statement, released in April, Benioff made over $55 million in the 2025 fiscal year, which ran from Feb. 1, 2024, to Jan. 31, 2025. His base salary was $1.55 million, and his bonus was $2,500, both unchanged from 2024. His stock awards increased by about $8 million, and his option awards by over $3 million from 2024. His $55 million compensation included over $4 million in personal security costs and over half a million dollars in aircraft usage. Meanwhile, Salesforce's median employee took home a total compensation of $178,949 in fiscal year 2025. Benioff made approximately 308 times more than the typical Salesforce employee. Related: Salesforce Has Used AI to Reduce Personnel Costs By $50 Million This Year. Here's Which Roles Are Affected. In the 2024 fiscal year, Salesforce's median employee received a salary of $164,985. That year, Benioff made $39.6 million, or 240 times more than the median. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images Salesforce's median salary is lower than Google, where a mid-level employee made $331,894 in 2024, and Nvidia, where a typical employee made $301,233. Meanwhile, Salesforce could be slowing down hiring in certain departments and accelerating hiring in others as it attempts to internally maximize its use of AI tools. The company's chief financial and operations officer, Robin Washington, said on a call with analysts on Wednesday that Salesforce has downsized "some" of its hiring needs thanks to AI. It's also hiring fewer customer service representatives and software engineers as its current staff use AI for greater productivity, but is growing its sales team by 22% this year. Related: Here's How Much 8 CEOs Made in 2024, From JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon to Disney's Bob Iger CEO Pay Is Rising A study released on Thursday by the Associated Press found that CEO pay increased by nearly 10% in 2024 due to higher profits and stock prices. The study, which was based on proxy statements filed with federal regulators by companies in the S&P 500, examined the pay of 344 executives. It found that the median pay package of CEOs in 2024 was $17.1 million, up from $16.3 million in 2023. The highest-earning CEO on the list was Patrick W. Smith, the CEO of taser-making company Axon, who took home $164.5 million. Other top-earning executives included General Electric's H. Lawrence Culp, Jr. ($87.4 million), Apple's Tim Cook ($74.6 million), and Netflix's Theodore A. Sarandos ($61.9 million). Most of those pay packages were comprised of stock or options awards. The study also found that the typical employee at an S&P 500 company earned $85,419 in 2024, a 1.7% year-over-year increase.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Salesforce says over 8,000 customers using new agentic AI tool
This story was originally published on CFO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CFO Dive newsletter. Salesforce's new agentic artificial intelligence product known as 'Agentforce' has so far generated over 8,000 deals, the company said Wednesday. Agentforce is also now producing $100 million in average order value, CEO Marc Benioff said during an earnings call. 'It's much faster than any product in our history, and we are not even fully deployed on all geographies, currencies or languages,' he said. Salesforce is among tech giants whose heavy AI spending is being closely watched by investors. Microsoft expects to spend roughly $80 billion during the current fiscal year on AI-enabled data centers to train large language models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in January. The tech giant remains on track to achieve this spending goal despite a recent pullback in AI data center projects, a spokesperson told CFO Dive in April. In September, Salesforce's venture capital division, Salesforce Ventures, announced a $500 million AI fund, which at the time marked a total commitment of $1 billion in the space over a period of 18 months. That announcement came just days after Salesforce unveiled Agentforce, a suite of AI agents designed to perform workplace tasks. At the time, Benioff said the company was seeking to deploy one billion agents by the end of 2025. In addition to generating over 8,000 deals, Agentforce has also handled over 750,000 requests on cutting case volume by 7% year over year, the company said Wednesday. 'As a result, we have reduced some of our hiring needs, enabling us to rebalance and redeploy 500 customer support employees to higher impact data plus AI roles by year-end, driving $50 million in savings,' Salesforce Chief Operating and Financial Officer Robin Washington said during the Wednesday earnings call. The enterprise software giant highlighted the Agentforce news as it also posted $9.8 billion in total revenues for its fiscal 2026 first quarter ended April 30, an increase of 8% compared with the year-earlier period. Despite the revenue growth, the company's stock fell more than 9% on Thursday. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets on Thursday downgraded their rating for Salesforce on Thursday, questioning the wisdom of the software giant's Tuesday announcement that it agreed to buy cloud data management firm Informatica for about $8 billion. 'While we understand wanting to control the full stack at the data layer, we don't know that it was mission-critical to own Informatica outright, especially with Informatica having integrations with Salesforce (including Agentforce),' the analysts said. 'Furthermore, given many of Salesforce's prior acquisitions have not been integrated, we believe this creates deal risk, not to mention the risk that Informatica becomes a distraction from Salesforce's core business.' The analysts also said they've heard from industry participants who are 'mixed on Agentforce and whether the technology truly lives up to the marketing yet.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Salesforce flags rising AI revenue, more Agentforce deals
This story was originally published on CIO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CIO Dive newsletter. Salesforce executives touted customer and revenue wins during a Wednesday earnings call. The company saw revenue increase 8% year over year, to $9.8 billion, according to the announcement. Data cloud and AI annual recurring revenue surpassed the $1 billion mark during the quarter, up 120% year over year. The company reported 4,000 paid Agentforce users, up from 3,000 during the prior quarter. 'We are now very well positioned to take advantage of this multitrillion-dollar opportunity in AI, enterprise software and digital labor,' said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, pointing to the company's increased revenue guidance for the 2026 fiscal year to $41.3 billion, up more than $400 million from the previous forecast. Salesforce is betting on agentic AI adoption to further extend its enterprise presence. The Agentforce platform, introduced last year, lets customers access a library of pre-built agents and create their own customized offerings. 'We're learning a lot about how to make agents successful, productive, how to scale, how to tune our own organization, and really get our customers all ready for this AI transformation in the enterprise led by agents,' Benioff said Wednesday. Earlier this week, Salesforce announced it will acquire cloud data management company Informatica for $8 billion, with plans to bolster its cloud-based data and AI capabilities. The deal will let Salesforce integrate Informatica's governance and data management services across several products, including Data Cloud. 'This is a moment where Informatica is more important to our customers than ever before,' Benioff said, in reference to enterprises' need to enhance their own data capabilities in order to deploy AI. Data governance woes represent a top challenge for enterprise agentic AI ambitions. Data privacy and security features were among the key changes IT executives leaders wanted to see from available agentic AI offerings, according to an April report published by Cloudera. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Entrepreneur
a day ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Salesforce Is Cutting Back on Hiring Engineers Thanks to AI
AI has enabled Salesforce to reduce hiring and save millions, but it's using the savings to hire in other areas. Salesforce has recently leveraged AI tools internally to hire fewer workers in certain divisions and more in others. "We have reduced some of our hiring needs," Salesforce's chief financial and operations officer Robin Washington said on Wednesday on a call with analysts, per Bloomberg. She credited the implementation of AI tools for the slowed hiring. According to Washington, AI has enabled Salesforce to reassign 500 customer service workers to other roles at the company this year, resulting in a cost savings of $50 million. The company is also hiring fewer software engineers as its current staff use AI to become more productive. Related: 'Amazing Momentum': Here's Why Salesforce Is Hiring 1,000 New Employees At the same time, Salesforce is ramping up its efforts to hire more salespeople to sell its AI products and other offerings. Chief revenue officer Miguel Milano said on the analyst call that the company now has around 13,000 salespeople and wants to expand the number by 22% this year. Salesforce currently has 76,453 total employees globally. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo by Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images Other tech companies are using AI to help with tasks ranging from engineering to reporting earnings. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated last month that engineers at the company are using AI to write about 30% of new code. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in the same month that the company was using AI to write more than 30% of new code, up from 25% in October. Meanwhile, Klarna, a company that has said its AI chatbot does the work of 700 customer service agents, reported earnings last week using an AI avatar of its CEO. Goldman Sachs predicts that 300 million jobs across the globe could be lost or downgraded due to AI by 2030. Salesforce isn't the only company to ramp up hiring in some areas and cut back in others, thanks to AI. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that IBM had used AI to replace several hundred human resource employees. IBM's workforce ended up growing instead of shrinking, Krishna disclosed, because the company used the cost savings from the layoffs to hire more software engineers, marketers and salespeople. Related: IBM Replaced Hundreds of HR Workers With AI, According to Its CEO Salesforce's own technology could help other companies reduce their headcount. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September that the company's AI agents would allow its clients to forgo hiring new employees or gig workers in busier periods of time. Earlier this week, Salesforce announced that it was acquiring cloud data management company Informatica for $8 billion to help advance its AI capabilities. The deal is one of Salesforce's largest since it bought Slack in 2021 for $27.7 billion and data firm Tableau in 2019 for $15.7 billion. Salesforce reported first-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat estimates, with revenue up 8% to $9.83 billion. The company stated that its AI subscriptions more than doubled in its first quarter and expects sales in the second quarter to be $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion, more than the $10.02 billion analysts anticipated. "Sometimes you have a quarter when everything is going right for you," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in an earnings call, per The Wall Street Journal. Related: Can Anyone Beat Microsoft at AI? The CEO of Salesforce Thinks His Company Can. Still, Salesforce shares were down about 4% on Thursday at the time of writing due to investor concerns about the still-early stage of its AI offerings and the deal risk with Informatica.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Informatica CEO discusses $8B Salesforce deal, AI & cloud strengths
Salesforce (CRM) announced it will be acquiring software company Informatica (INFA) in a deal valued at $8 billion. Informatica CEO Amit Walia comes on Market Domination to talk more about the deal and how it plays into Informatica's generative AI and cloud growth. Catch Yahoo Finance's interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, where he talks more about the Informatica acquisition and the company's first quarter earnings results. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
