Salesforce (CRM) has had a rough 2026. The stock is down around 30% year-to-date, dragged lower by fears that AI will hollow out the SaaS business model it helped define.
The core concern is straightforward. Salesforce built its business on per-seat licensing — charging companies based on headcount. If AI lets companies do more with fewer people, they may need fewer seats.
Marc Benioff isn’t buying it. “People think we have our back against the wall when in fact the opportunity has never been greater,” the CEO told the Wall Street Journal.
The broader software sector is feeling it too. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) is down 20% over the same period, with the hardest-hit SaaS names off by roughly double Salesforce’s drop.
Salesforce started pivoting toward AI seriously in early 2023, when Benioff gathered around 40 executives for a three-day session at Salesforce Tower to rewrite the company’s annual plan around AI. Saturday strategy sessions ran for months after that.
That push produced Agentforce, launched in late 2024. It lets customers build autonomous agents for tasks like handling service tickets, qualifying leads, and managing IT requests. Currently 23,000 of its 150,000 customers are using it.
Real results are starting to come in. At Pearson, Agentforce agents handle order status queries, refunds, and lost access codes — lifting the rate of customer questions resolved without human involvement by 40%. PenFed Credit Union cut IT tickets by 40% using an agent to handle password resets and account unlocks.
Not everything is working smoothly. Pandora’s chief digital officer said Agentforce struggles with vague or complex customer requests — like recommending jewelry when a customer says “my wife likes dogs.” Complex problems still need humans.
Early customer feedback also flagged the time spent preparing data before the AI could use it. Salesforce responded by building a data-integration layer into its tech stack and acquiring companies in data management and AI sales.
By year-end, Salesforce plans to launch Agent Albert, a new AI platform that studies user behavior and takes actions on their behalf. It’s named after Einstein, Salesforce’s mascot, and represents three years of internal development.
On pricing, Salesforce moved away from a pure seat model about a year ago. It now offers a hybrid structure — customers keep seat licenses but pay per action for Agentforce usage. A new metric called Agentic Work Units (AWUs) tracks the output: 2.4 billion AWUs were processed last quarter, up 57% quarter-over-quarter.
Benioff also argues that customers can’t just vibe-code their own CRM. The data security, brand safety, and compliance features Salesforce has built over decades are hard to replicate, he said — even with Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex.
Salesforce has invested over $300 million in Anthropic since 2023. In February, when the two companies announced Claude Cowork would integrate with Salesforce apps, CRM stock jumped 4%.
Stifel analysts noted that “CIOs and CTOs prefer a unified platform that integrates agents, actions, data, and workflows” — a point Benioff is leaning into as the debate over SaaS’s future continues.
Andreessen Horowitz data shows that AI-heavy business customers increased their median Salesforce spend by 3% over the past three months.
The post Salesforce (CRM) Stock Down 30% in 2026 as CEO Defends SaaS Model Against AI Fears appeared first on CoinCentral.
