Under the leadership of technology visionary Marc Benioff, Salesforce(NYSE: CRM) has become one of the most influential companies in the world of enterprise software.
At its core, Salesforce is a leader in customer relationship management (CRM) -- a tool that allows sales leaders to track deal flow, pipeline trends, marketing campaigns, and more in a data-centric, efficient way. But over the last several years, Salesforce has diversified its platform through several high-profile acquisitions. The company acquired data integration service MuleSoft for $6.5 billion back in 2018. A year later, it acquired dashboarding tool Tableau, and it added messaging platform Slack to its ecosystem back in 2021.
While the specific tools and end markets that these various assets serve differ, a common thread is a hefty reliance on data. By acquiring these various software businesses, Salesforce has quietly become a market leader for data-driven enterprise tools.
This dynamic has served Salesforce well over the last couple of years, as investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has become a staple for businesses of all sizes. While the majority of AI attention revolves around semiconductors, autonomous driving, or robotics, I'd encourage investors to take a serious look at Salesforce. The company is going head to head with "Magnificent Seven" member Microsoft in an emerging field known as agentic AI.
Below, I'm going to explain what agentic AI is and detail why this is such an enormous opportunity for Salesforce. Furthermore, I'll explore how Salesforce is making headway in this pocket of the AI realm and assess if now is a good opportunity to buy the stock.
What is agentic AI?
Odds are that if you've ever called a customer support number, you were required to go through a tedious rigmarole just to get a human operator on the other end of the line. While that process alone can be frustrating, it's even more annoying when the support agent isn't capable of resolving the issue you called about.
What if processes like these could be improved, or even go away altogether? Well, that's partially why agentic AI is garnering a lot of attention right now.
Agentic AI is built to operate with autonomy. By leveraging enormous volumes of data, companies such as Salesforce are building AI agents that are capable of streamlining complicated workflows -- bringing higher levels of efficiency and even customer satisfaction to the corporate environment.
Benioff has said the total addressable market (TAM) for agentic AI could be $1 trillion, but prominent venture capital (VC) firm Battery Ventures is calling for the total AI software market to eclipse $4 trillion thanks in large part to how AI is transforming the services industry -- and agentic AI is a core pillar of how software is expected to bridge the gap with services and labor.
How is Salesforce transforming agentic AI?
Salesforce is jumping into the agentic AI pool through a new product it's calling Agentforce. When referring to demand for Agentforce, Benioff touted that Salesforce has "never seen anything like it."
During Salesforce's third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings call (for the period ended Sept. 30), investors learned that IBM, Accenture, and FedEx are some notable customers using Agentforce.
Personally, I am intrigued about how the collaboration with Accenture could unfold, as the company recently partnered with Nvidia to help train 30,000 workers on AI integration services. And taking this a step further, Nvidia is also investing in the area of agentic AI, through a partnership with healthcare start-up Hippocratic AI. Although it's still early days, I'm cautiously optimistic that there could be some upside for Salesforce through further developments with Accenture or Nvidia.
Image source: Getty Images.
Is Salesforce stock a buy right now?
In the chart below, it's easy to spot that Salesforce stock has experienced some meaningful valuation expansion over the last six months or so.
As such, the company's forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 33 isn't exactly a bargain.
Thanks to its $10 billion investment in OpenAI a couple of years ago, Microsoft gained a first-mover advantage in developing agentic AI products in its new CoPilot platform. Nevertheless, I remain moderately bullish over Salesforce's prospects relative to those of Microsoft.
The reason is that Salesforce has built a truly ubiquitous enterprise software platform thanks to its various acquisitions over the years. In turn, Salesforce has an opportunity to build numerous agents into its various product offers, and cross-sell these tools across chat, marketing, sales, data, and more to its customers. As such, Salesforce is well positioned to not only capture a good portion of the agentic AI market, but also keep customers sticky throughout its ecosystem.
For these reasons, I think the premium in Salesforce stock is warranted and I see the company as a screaming buy on the AI narrative.
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Adam Spatacco has positions in Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Accenture Plc, FedEx, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool recommends International Business Machines and recommends the following options: long January 2025 $290 calls on Accenture Plc, long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short January 2025 $310 calls on Accenture Plc, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
