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Salesforce is set to spend around $300 million on Anthropic tokens in 2026, reflecting the company’s cultural shift as it deepens its investment in AI tools amid hiring freezes. Salesforce Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said on the All-In podcast that the company is making the massive investment in coding-related work powered by AI systems and software agents.
This Salesforce move shows how companies are shifting investments from workforce expansion to AI infrastructure, coding platforms, and automation tools. Benioff called AI agents “awesome” because they significantly reduce software development costs while boosting engineering speed and productivity.
Engineer Hiring Freeze
In 2024, the Salesforce CEO announced that the company would freeze engineering hiring for the first time in 2025 as AI tools boosted productivity by more than 30 per cent.
In his interview, Benioff said, “We’re not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with Agentforce and with other AI technology that we’re using for engineering teams by more than 30%.” According to the CEO, the company has experienced significant development velocity across Salesforce engineering teams.
While the company paused engineering recruitment, hiring in other divisions continued, especially in sales. Benioff previously shared that Salesforce planned to hire between 1,000 and 2,000 sales employees to explain AI products and their business applications to customers.
Engineers and AI Working Together
While Salesforce has paused additional software engineering hiring, Benioff clarified that the company does not believe AI can fully replace human engineers yet.
He stated that engineers are now working in partnership with AI coding tools and autonomous software agents rather than being replaced by them.
According to reports, Salesforce engineering teams are working alongside AI tools such as Anthropic AI models, OpenAI Codex, Cursor AI coding tools, and Agentforce AI systems. The CEO further said that the company’s 15,000 engineers are gradually evolving into supervisory roles to oversee AI-generated coding workflows.
According to Benioff, engineers are not simply working with AI, but with agents that actively assist them in coding tasks. He emphasised the importance of human engineers, saying AI systems still cannot function completely autonomously. “We’re not at that level yet of AI,” Benioff said.
AI Becomes Salesforce’s Key Growth Engine
According to reports, Salesforce’s AI-focused business unit, Agentforce, has emerged as one of the company’s major revenue contributors. Benioff said Agentforce has already crossed approximately $800 million in annual recurring revenue.
The company is positioning AI as a central pillar of its future business model, describing the transition as part of a broader “digital labour revolution.” He also stated that AI now accounts for nearly 30 to 50 per cent of the company’s overall Salesforce workload.
AI adoption is not limited to Salesforce. It has become a wider trend across Silicon Valley, where AI tools are increasingly reshaping engineering operations, software development economics, and workforce planning.
