Artificial intelligence has transformed entire industries in just a few short years. From the rise of machine learning to the most advanced generative AI, the technology has seeped into just about every business over the last decade.
If the last decade has taught us anything, it's that technology never stands still. Many companies are looking to build on the breakthroughs of generative AI to develop a new AI revolution: agentic AI.
AI agents aren't just capable of generating text or images, they can understand tasks and objectives and make decisions and take actions with limited human supervision.
Agentic AI has the potential to completely change the economy, making workforces more productive as humans work alongside AI agents, and agents solve problems humans aren't well suited for. These three companies are pushing agentic AI forward which could significantly benefit the businesses they serve and their own investors at the same time. And their stocks look like great opportunities to invest before the revolution takes hold.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Salesforce
Salesforce(NYSE: CRM) offers a suite of leading enterprise business software. It pioneered the cloud-based software-as-a-service model, and now offers "clouds" for sales, customer service, marketing, and data storage and analysis, among others. As its suite expands, it's been able to convince more and more customers to take multiple services. That increases their likelihood of continuing using Salesforce, but it also gives the enterprise software company a major advantage when it comes to AI.
Salesforce stores a ton of data on the inner workings of each company's business. CEO Marc Benioff calls this data an "unfair advantage" for Salesforce when it comes to artificial intelligence. Having access to those data applicable to each enterprise makes Salesforce's AI more accurate and less hallucinogenic.
Salesforce introduced its Einstein Copilot about a year ago, which acts as an assistant within Salesforce's software, to help complete various tasks more easily. But its launch of AgentForce last Fall could bring agentic AI to thousands of businesses, helping them automate more tasks. Management said it had already signed 200 deals for Agentforce in the first week of its launch.
Agentforce presents an opportunity for Salesforce to draw in more enterprise customers and increase the amount existing customers spend on its services. Furthermore, this could make the Salesforce ecosystem more appealing, leading to higher retention rates.
With the stock trading for about 29-times analysts' consensus estimate for fiscal 2026 earnings (ending next January), the stock isn't exactly cheap. However, that's a fair price to pay for a company with a clear path to consistent revenue growth, a growing focus on profitability, and the tremendous upside potential of its agentic AI software solution.
2. Microsoft
Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) is a dominant force in enterprise software thanks to its Windows operating system and Office productivity suite. It's expanded on that software in recent years via acquisitions (Github) and fully adopted the software-as-a-service approach.
Microsoft has been a big beneficiary of the boom in artificial intelligence. But that's mostly thanks to its Azure cloud computing platform, which provides compute capacity for developers and access to foundational models like OpenAI's GPT 4o. Azure AI services grew 157% year over year last quarter, and it remains capacity constrained relative to demand.
That said, adoption of its Copilot AI, which can help you build a spreadsheet or figure out which library to call in your code, has been strong. The number of workers using Copilot in Microsoft 365 increased ten-fold over the last 18 months. Meanwhile, management counts 150 million developers using Github Copilot.
The next step beyond the out-of-the-box Copilot offered by Microsoft are custom AI agents built using Microsoft's Copilot Studio. More and more businesses are using Microsoft's tools, combined with their own data, to take advantage of expanding AI capabilities to automate a growing set of tasks within their operations.
Microsoft said it saw over 400,000 custom agents created in the last three months, doubling sequentially.
As more customers look to integrate Microsoft's AI capabilities into their own operations, Microsoft should see continued growth in its enterprise software segment in addition to its strong growth in the cloud. With over 400 million potential users to sell AI agents to, their growth runway is massive. Shares trade around 31-times forward earnings as of this writing. Again, not the cheapest stock on the market, but a price worth paying for a company with the financial strength and growth opportunities of Microsoft.
3. Meta Platforms
Meta(NASDAQ: META) is one of the largest digital advertising platforms in the world as the operator of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Its digital advertising operations have depended on advanced AI capabilities for a long time. From helping marketers target their ads, to ensuring users see those ads at the right time to maximize their likelihood of a positive response, AI is working behind the scenes in your feeds.
Meta was quick to incorporate generative AI into its marketing tools. Its Advantage+ campaigns can include AI generated text or backgrounds and they can use AI to expand or animate marketers' images. Management said Advantage+ shopping campaigns surpassed a $20 billion run rate last quarter, up 70% year over year. Over 4 million marketers are using at least one generative AI tool, up from 1 million six months ago.
But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees its AI tools for marketers becoming much more agentic. "Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we're going to go do the rest for them," he said during Meta's second quarter earnings call last year. In other words, Meta will provide free AI agents for businesses, replacing a lot of the work involved in creating and targeting new ad campaigns.
The potential impact on Meta's business and any business advertising online could be huge. Meta is creating significant value for businesses and that should translate into higher ad price over time. It's already seen strong price increases as more marketers adopt its generative AI tools. Average price per ad increased 10% last quarter, driven by improved ad performance.
Meta shares trade for 29-times forward earnings after very strong price performance over the last few months. Still, it's not too late to buy shares. It's capable of exhibiting strong revenue growth with margin expansion as it builds tools allowing marketers to hand off more work to AI agents over time.
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Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adam Levy has positions in Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
