Salesforce Q2 shines amid AI demand

Salesforce reported a better than expected second quarter and raised its outlook as it saw AI demand surge.

The company reported second quarter net income of $3.53 billion, or $4.29 a share, on revenue of $11.34 billion, up 11% from a year ago. Salesforce reported a gain on investments of $2.61 billion largely due to its stake in Anthropic. Non-GAAP earnings were $5.90 a share, but appear to include investment gains.

Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP second quarter earnings of $3.27 a share on revenue of $11.23 billion.

Salesforce said Agentforce and Data 360 annual recurring revenue nearly hit $3.9 billion, up 210% from a year ago. Agentforce ARR, which includes Slackbot and Headless 360, topped $1.5 billion.

The company cited strong order value from Slack and bookings for its Agentforce One Edition and Agentforce for Apps. Salesforce added that Data 360 ingested 104 trillion records.

Separately, Salesforce announced Claudeforce, an integration with Anthropic's Claude platform and Agentforce.

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CEO Marc Benioff said the second quarter outperformed across the board. He said: "AI is delivering value across every layer of our platform. We’re seeing incredible demand for our AI and data products, with ARR about to cross $4 billion. And with AIforce, our trusted enterprise harness, we’re unlocking the data, workflows, business logic, actions, and governance inside Salesforce and making it available to every agent, model, and interface."

As for the outlook, Salesforce said third quarter revenue will be between $11.42 billion to $11.5 billion, up 11% to 12%. Non-GAAP earnings for the third quarter will be $3.42 a share to $3.44 a share.

For fiscal 2027, Salesforce projected revenue of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion, up 11% to 12% from a year ago, with non-GAAP earnings of $16.67 a share to $16.71 a share.

On Salesforce's earnings call, Benioff said "apps are not dying, in fact they're growing." Benioff took aim at the SaaSpocalypse narrative and cited a partnership with Anthropic, which is also a customer.

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Benioff said:

• "Claudeforce really shows how we're bringing together the world's number one AI and the number one CRM. It's really the best of both worlds. We're combining clouds extraordinary intelligence and reasoning with Salesforce's trusted data and applications and workflows and business rules and governance."
• "Nine of the 10 AI companies use Salesforce and Slack. Their spend is up 435 percent year over year. Frontier models depend on CRM. They make sure that it works, that it all comes together."
• "With this strong performance and momentum, and the strategic acquisitions, especially Contentful and Fin, we're expecting to close in the coming weeks, and we're raising our fiscal year 27 revenue guidance by about $300 million dollars in constant currency. It's a fundamental shift in the software industry. AI is unlocking value."