Salesforce (CRM) wants you to know: everybody uses it, nobody understands it, but all that really matters is that their future is all about AI agents. It seems to be selling, too.
On Wednesday, the enterprise software giant reported earnings which exceeded expectations. Its revenues grew 10% year-over-year, current remaining performance obligations (CRPO) rose 11%, and net income grew 32%. Subscription and support revenue grew 11% YoY.
But the real standout, at least in the company’s eyes, was the fast growth from its new agentic AI platform, Agentforce, for some of the new growth. In the latest quarter, it highlighted that it had closed “over 12,500 deals” since launching its agentic AI platform, adding that “over 6,000 are paid.” Last quarter, those numbers were 8,000 and 4,000 respectively.
Salesforce notes that most of its Data Cloud and Agentforce bookings in the latest quarter came from new customers to Salesforce, but 40% came from “existing customer expansion.” In other words, companies already using Salesforce added Agentforce.
The financial effects are starting to show up too. The company says that annual recurring revenues from Data Cloud and AI grew 120% year-over-year, exceeding $1.2 billion. However, that might seem like a small contribution for a company which is expecting to generate over $41 billion in revenue this year.
Investors seemed to agree. Despite the double-digit growth and a modest bump to the company’s full year guidance, Salesforce stock fell 4% in after hours, extending a year-long decline in the company’s shares. It has lost nearly a quarter of its value since the start of 2025.
It’s not that 10% revenue growth, fast client adoption, and a bump on guidance isn’t nice. It’s that Salesforce’s 40x price-to-earnings (P/E) leaves the company with a fairly aggressive valuation when compared with megacap peers like Alphabet (GOOGL) or Meta (META) , both of which are trading in the 20x range.
To that end, its premium valuation leaves a lot up to estimation. For one, the economy is in a weaker place than it was a year ago, which is affecting enterprise software buys. And although CEO Marc Benioff said in June that, “AI is doing 30% to 50% of the company’s work,” and allowing the company to cut jobs, its growth is by no means comparable to other AI ‘pickaxe’ plays like Nvidia (NVDA) .
Until Salesforce can deliver growth that handily exceeds the 10% it already touts, investors might be of the mind that ‘wait and see’ is a better spend of their money.
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Sep 3, 2025, where it first appeared in the Investing News, Analysis, and Tips section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.