In 1966 Johnny Rivers had one of the biggest hits of his career.
The song was “Secret Agent Man,” the theme for the British TV show “Secret Man,” and Rivers hit a decidedly Cold War note when he sang about “giving you a number and taking away your name.”
Well, the Berlin Wall may have come down and Nehru jackets may have gone out of style, but the Secret Agent theme song was brought back into service at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s (CRM) annual get-together in San Francisco.
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The producer of customer-relations-management software for enterprise reworked the Sixties era tune to tout its Agentforce AI platform.
“For the last, especially 10 years, we’ve been talking about the emergence of AI and how AI has been a critical part of our future,” Chairman and Chief Executive Marc Benioff said during his keynote address. “We want to be the first to welcome you into the future. We want to future-proof you, not only in your careers, but your companies too.”
Agentforce, Benioff said, “has to be the biggest breakthrough that we have ever had in technology and, I think, it’s the biggest breakthrough that I’ve seen in a long time in artificial intelligence.”
Salesforce, which Benioff co-founded in 1999, said Agentforce enables companies to scale their workforces on demand with a few clicks.
Marc Benioff has been running Salesforce for over a quarter century.
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Salesforce announces Nvidia collaboration
The platform’s AI agents can analyze data, make decisions, and take action on tasks like answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, and optimizing marketing campaigns.
During his address, Benioff, who paused to acknowledge CNBC’s Jim Cramer and exchange high fives, described how Salesforce customers, such as entertainment giant Disney (DIS) , luxury retail brand Saks Fifth Avenue and academic publisher John Wiley & Sons (WLY) , will be able work more efficiently with Agentforce.
Salesforce made several announcements on Sept. 17, including a strategic collaboration with AI-chip heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) “to develop advanced AI capabilities for the enterprise with autonomous agent and interactive avatar experiences.”
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The companies said they would work together to deliver optimized predictive and generative AI workflows by connecting Nvidia’s AI platform, which includes accelerated computing and AI software, with the Salesforce platform and Agentforce.
“In the future, every company, every job will be enhanced by a wide range of AI agents, assistants that will transform how we work,” Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.
“Nvidia and Salesforce are bringing together our technologies to accelerate the development of AI agents for companies to supercharge their productivity,” he added.
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Shares of Salesforce, a Dow component since 2020, are down 4.1% year-to-date, while the stock is up 17.6% from a year ago. The company, which is scheduled to report quarterly results in November, beat Wall Street’s second-quarter results in August.
Several investment firms issued research notes about Salesforce on Sept. 19, according to TheFly.
Truist raised its price target to $315 from $300, while affirming a buy rating on the company’s shares.
Loop Capital stays neutral on Salesforce
The investment firm’s analyst said its initial thoughts are on key topics discussed by management at Dreamforce, including Agentforce, Data Cloud, the strategic partnership with Nvidia, and the recently announced acquisition of data protection group Own Co.
While the firm has not changed estimates, Truist said that it was “incrementally confident” that compounding profits and free cash flows at Salesforce would continue.
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The company’s “highly developed” capital allocation and deployment strategy also supports its increased opportunity for improved growth in subscription revenue, the firm added.
Loop Capital affirmed its hold rating and $270 price target on Salesforce after attending Dreamforce.
The company is clearly banking on its newly introduced Agentforce to be the centerpiece of its product-driven growth strategy, the firm said. Salesforce’s “impressive marketing machine” was in full force at the event, touting not only the power of Agentforce but also the ease of deploying AI agents on the platform, the firm said.
However, Loop Capital said that it remains neutral on the stock pending more concrete signs of accelerating business trends driven by the company’s generative-AI products.
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Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow said Dreamforce and the analyst event were catalysts for the Salesforce investment case.
The company’s artificial intelligence platform story clearly “is coming together from a product perspective and, it seems to create healthy customer interest,” the analyst said.
Post Dreamforce, Lenschow said, the “emerging AI agent story” for Salesforce could become a new catalyst for the shares. He maintained an overweight rating on the shares with a $305 price target.
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