Workday Wins Big State Government Go Lives as AI Tools Spread

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff unveiled AIforce, an AI connectivity layer that lets employees access Salesforce data and run complex workflows inside third-party AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude and Slack, at Dreamforce 2026, using the stage to directly criticize Microsoft. AIforce launched with three integrations: Claudeforce, built in partnership with Anthropic, brings Salesforce data directly into Claude; Slackforce connects that same data to conversations in Slack; and AgentforceCoworker operates inside Salesforce's own Lightning interface. Benioff framed AIforce as the answer to what he calls the "Fantasyland" problem, arguing that rival AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot lack the reliable business data layer required to safely power a business, extending a public rivalry that dates to Dreamforce 2024, when he compared Copilot to "Clippy." Salesforce generated $11.35 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations on both earnings and revenue, and CRM stock has rallied about 34% over the past month after falling as much as 37% earlier in 2026, closing at $255.65 on Sept. 15. On the same day as the Dreamforce announcement, Salesforce suffered a global service disruption that locked some customers out of their systems, and investors are watching Agentforce and Data 360 adoption numbers in the next quarterly report, where combined annual recurring revenue already exceeds $2.9 billion, more than 200% growth from a year ago.

Salesforce's fair value estimate has been lifted from US$241.72 to US$275.87, an uplift of about 14% in the latest analyst model, following the launch of the Koa CRM reasoning model with NVIDIA, the US$3.6b acquisition of AI customer service company Fin, and the AIforce rollout. The updated model raised the revenue growth assumption from 9.78% to 10.08%, kept the net profit margin assumption unchanged at 18.18%, moved the future P/E assumption from 20.21x to 22.23x, and shifted the discount rate from 9.39% to 9.11%. Salesforce also expanded its partnership with Anthropic through the launch of Claudeforce, which embeds Claude as the default AI model across Agentforce, Slack and Data 360, and reported what management described as one of its best fiscal Q2s, with revenue of US$11.35b, 11% year over year growth, and full year 2027 revenue guidance of US$46.1b to US$46.4b. AI products including Agentforce and Data Cloud AI reached almost US$3.9b in annual recurring revenue, with Agentforce annual recurring revenue growing over 240% year over year, while Salesforce recorded a US$2.6b investment gain related to Anthropic and shares rose between 18% and 22% around the results. Analysts remain split, with Canaccord, Guggenheim, Stifel, TD Cowen, Argus, Cantor Fitzgerald, BMO Capital, Mizuho, JPMorgan and Erste Group raising targets as high as US$300, while Morgan Stanley, KeyBanc, CLSA and Phillip Securities cited slower growth and mixed Agentforce feedback, and Wells Fargo and Citi stayed Equal Weight and Neutral.