To Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff context is king and without it agentic AI won't deliver.
In a Dreamforce keynote that highlighted Salesforce's large enterprise Agentforce adopters, Benioff repeatedly came back to context and context engineering, a term that's just gaining some momentum from companies like Elastic and Workday.
"AI alone is not enough. It's not enough just have an LLM. It needs (Agentforce) capabilities to connect it, to give it the context, to give it the guardrails, and all of the critical pieces," said Benioff.
The argument for Agentforce, according to Benioff and a bevy of Salesforce executives, is that you need the customer data, the ability to navigate unstructured and structured information, and trust to bring context to every conversation.
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Benioff in a keynote that highlighted Agentforce adoption at Williams Sonoma, Pandora, PepsiCo, FedEx and Dell referred to context repeatedly as Salesforce highlighted its foray into new markets, notably ITSM, supply chain and other use cases.
Agentforce 360 has a feature called Intelligent Context, which provides AI agents the ability to navigate multiple content types to pull data across documents, tables, diagrams and much of the dark data in an enterprise.
In demos, Agentforce powered agents for Williams Sonoma and Pandora were able to pick up where conversations left off and give context based on available customer data. Knowing that context led to
Williams Sonoma CEO Laura Albert said Agentforce is powering the company's Olive AI agent and the goal is to make the digital retail channels as personable as the physical stores. "We do 70% of our business online, but can you imagine if the websites give you the same warm feeling you get from the stores," said Albert.
A FedEx demo highlighted the uploading of a 200 page PDF and how it could be read and parsed into data to give Agentforce agents context for a correct answer.
FedEx has been honing its data game for years and has recently been outlining how it's going to leverage its data and metadata into logistic intelligence services. Richard Smith, Chief Operating Officer of FedEx International and CEO of FedEx Airline, noted that metadata about the package is as important as the package. He added that Agentforce was helping its sales team close more business.
PepsiCo was also highlighted as an Agentforce adopter and Athina Kanioura, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at PepsiCo, said the company "will be agentic-first by the end of 2026 connecting all operations, processes and the way we strategies, do innovation, commercialization and execution," she said. "We are all about profitable growth."
Indeed, PepsiCo on its most recent earnings call noted that it has to plan for a revamped distribution model that is less about retail and more about digital channels. PepsiCo will need more context, insights and automation to manage through the changing landscape. Enterprises start to harvest AI-driven exponential efficiency efforts
Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technology, said the company is using Agentforce on multiple fronts as well as the supply chain. Dell said agentic AI is tied at the hip with process automation.
"We start with the big things, go through the process of simplifying, standardizing it and then reimagining it then applying the technology," said Dell. "Automation of the workflow and the processes ultimately give more time back to those people that are doing things super valuable to us as a company."
