Salesforce invests in rival AI tech
· business
The Slackening of AI Borders at Salesforce
The recent promotion of Claude Tag by Salesforce has sent ripples through its own employees, sparking confusion about why their employer is boosting a rival that competes with two AI products it has developed, Slackbot and Agentforce. This awkwardness isn’t hard to spot, especially given the fact that Slack customers can now choose between three AI assistants vying for the same job.
At first glance, this might seem like a minor issue of corporate branding or product positioning. However, it speaks to a deeper problem: the blurring of lines between Salesforce’s own products and its partners’ products. This phenomenon is not unique to Salesforce; in fact, it’s a symptom of a broader trend in the tech industry where companies are increasingly reliant on third-party AI agents.
The $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack by Salesforce in 2021 was touted as a strategic move to create an “agentic operating system” - a single surface for every AI agent and app a worker touches. However, the reality is that Salesforce’s own AI products now run on top of Anthropic’s Claude technology. This means that Salesforce isn’t just tolerating Anthropic; it’s built its business model around it.
Agentforce has seen significant growth, hitting $800 million in annual recurring revenue at last count, with a 169% year-on-year increase across 29,000 closed deals. But if Claude Tag starts capturing the same enterprise workflows Agentforce was designed to handle, the two products will pull Salesforce’s revenue in opposite directions. This raises questions about the long-term sustainability of Salesforce’s AI strategy and whether it can continue to compete with its own partners.
CEO Marc Benioff has framed Slack as “the interface to AI,” but this approach risks creating a market where companies are forced to choose between competing products rather than integrating them seamlessly. The promotion of Claude Tag highlights the tension between model agnosticism - allowing multiple AI agents to coexist within a platform - and clear product differentiation.
What’s at stake here is not just Salesforce’s bottom line, but also the future of AI development in the enterprise space. As Anthropic plans to bring Claude Tag to Microsoft Teams, email, and other project management tools within weeks, it threatens to turn AI into a cross-platform agent that works wherever people collaborate - regardless of which platform they’re using.
For Salesforce, this is the uncomfortable part: the partner it pays $300 million a year is quietly building something that doesn’t need Slack at all. The question now is whether Salesforce will continue down this path or try to assert its dominance in the AI market. One thing is certain: the future of AI development will be shaped by the decisions made in the coming months, and Salesforce’s employees - as well as its investors - are waiting with bated breath to see which direction their company chooses to take.
As the lines between products and partners continue to blur, one thing is clear: the stakes have never been higher for Salesforce. Will it emerge as a leader in AI development or will it become just another player in a crowded market? The answer lies not in the technology itself, but in the willingness of its leadership to take bold action and chart a new course forward.
Reader Views
- TNThe Newsroom Desk · editorial
Salesforce's over-reliance on Anthropic's Claude technology raises valid concerns about its long-term AI strategy. While Agentforce is thriving, it's unclear whether Salesforce can sustain growth if Claude starts siphoning off the same market share. The elephant in the room is that this partnership may be less about a mutually beneficial relationship and more about Salesforce attempting to future-proof itself against potential competitors. What happens when Anthropic becomes too powerful? Will Salesforce be forced to re-evaluate its strategic partnerships or risk losing control over its own business model?
- DHDr. Helen V. · economist
The blurred lines between Salesforce's own AI products and those of its partners are not just a branding issue, but also a symptom of a more pressing problem: the lack of transparency in how these partnerships affect revenue streams. As Agentforce's growth is pulled in opposite directions by Claude Tag's expansion into its territory, investors would be wise to scrutinize Salesforce's financials for potential cannibalization. A clearer understanding of these dynamics could help investors and analysts separate the signal from the noise in this complex market.
- MTMarcus T. · small-business owner
The real question is whether Salesforce can profit from its own chaos. By relying on Anthropic's Claude technology, the company is essentially outsourcing its AI strategy to a rival. This could lead to a scenario where Agentforce cannibalizes its own market share, creating a revenue sinkhole for Salesforce. The article highlights the blurring of lines between in-house and partner products, but it overlooks the elephant in the room: the inherent instability of this model. Until Salesforce can produce a compelling narrative about how its AI strategy will drive long-term growth, investors should remain skeptical.