Agentforce, $500 Mn AI Fund & More At Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) innovation continues to be the big focus area for Salesforce, and the early conversations ahead of Dreamforce 2024 reiterate this. With the introduction of Agentforce, a new USD 500 million AI investment fund, and initiatives to democratise AI learning, Salesforce is looking to position itself as a key player in the AI-driven future of business.

For the senior leadership at the forum, the important takeaways were around how businesses can leverage AI to improve efficiency, scale operations and enhance customer satisfaction while maintaining high standards of trust and responsibility.

Addressing the press on 16 September 2024, several Salesforce senior executives discussed how the company has not only embraced AI but also integrated it into its platform, signalling a transformation that is driven by intelligent automation and digital agents.

Agentforce At Work
Agentforce is Salesforce’s latest AI-driven innovation that aims to improve efficiency for businesses. “AI has been rapidly evolving over the past 18 months, transforming Salesforce’s platform into an intelligent ecosystem that includes chatbots, co-pilots and AI agents. Agentforce represents the pinnacle of this evolution, designed to make companies more productive and efficient,” said Brian Milam, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce.

Milam explained that the platform allows businesses to deploy AI agents capable of performing day-to-day tasks, improving customer service, and streamlining operations. According to him, the platform has already demonstrated success, with companies such as OpenTable and Wiley seeing improvements in efficiency and customer satisfaction through the use of AI agents.

The senior leaders explained that one of the key advantages of Agentforce is its ability to scale rapidly.

“Salesforce has already begun turning on Agentforce for 1,200 customers at Dreamforce, enabling them to build their own AI agents within minutes. This rapid deployment, combined with the ability to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce’s existing workflows and data, gives businesses a powerful tool to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced digital world,” said Milam.

The Agentforce Partner Network
Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI, further expanded on Agentforce, describing it as a “transformational shift for businesses”. She said, “Agentforce is not just another chatbot or co-pilot; it is an entire AI ecosystem designed to handle tasks, improve decision-making, and drive value for businesses.”

One of the key differentiators of Agentforce is its ability to connect seamlessly with Salesforce’s customer data, ensuring higher accuracy and faster time to value than competing AI platforms. Shih also introduced the Agentforce Partner Network, which will enable customers to deploy third-party agent skills and extend the capabilities of the platform.

The $500 Million AI Fund
Another major highlight at the company was Salesforce Ventures’ USD 500 million fund dedicated to AI innovation. John Small, Chief Corporate Development and Investments Officer at Salesforce explained that this new fund would bring Salesforce’s total AI investment commitment to USD 1 billion over the past 18 months. “The investment aims to support AI entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of AI while adhering to core values of trust and responsibility” said Small, emphasising the importance of ethical development in AI, a principle that Salesforce Ventures has made central to its strategy.

Salesforce also emphasised its commitment to democratising access to AI. The company announced AI for All, an initiative designed to expand AI learning opportunities. Salesforce has waived all fees for instructor-led AI courses and credentialing on Trailhead through 2025, representing a USD 50 million investment in communities worldwide. Additionally, Salesforce plans to establish AI learning centres in key cities such as Chicago, Tokyo and Sydney, building on the momentum of its first AI centre in London.

Rahul Arodku, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Unified Data Services and Einstein at Salesforce, also spoke about the Data Cloud innovations at the company. Arodku said, “Reliable and trusted data is the foundation of successful AI implementations. Data Cloud, a core component of the Salesforce platform, enables companies to build unified customer views by integrating structured and unstructured data.”

Innovations, including the support for unstructured data types like audio and video and the introduction of a sub-second real-time data pipeline, allow businesses to deliver personalised customer experiences in real-time.

The Customer Zero
In response to a question from BW Businessworld about how senior leadership at Salesforce leverages AI-driven insights to align sales strategies with broader business goals, and what key outcomes this alignment might have in the coming year, Milam explained more about the company’s long-term AI strategy. He said, “We have been spending a lot of time over the last 10 years leveraging predictive AI, so we have been in this AI game for a very long time. It is driven tons of insights for us around how we manage our teams and what expectations we have around outcomes as we look at things like pipeline quality by region, segment, product, and industry.”

Salesforce is transitioning from predictive AI to more transformative generative AI, optimising resources and opportunities in entirely new ways. He highlighted that years of accumulated data offer valuable insights into resource allocation, particularly on the services side. “For example, how do you make sure you are getting the most from your support agents by leveraging agents that are available 24/7, at scale, while still having a human in the loop to handle more complex issues? It’s an exciting time to leverage our technology, what we call Salesforce on Salesforce, or ‘Customer Zero’, to drive our strategies going forward.”

Arodku added more on the ‘Customer Zero’ model and remarked, “It is an iterative loop. We learn from our customers, and then ‘Customer Zero’ serves as inspiration, creating a continuous learning cycle.”

Citing an example of how one of the world’s largest automotive companies uses Salesforce’s Data Cloud and predictive models to generate propensity-to-buy predictions, Arodku said, “This real-world application mirrors how Customer Zero at Salesforce uses similar insights, helping guide sales strategies with predictive analytics. There are so many parallels between what we are learning from our customers and how Customer Zero uses these insights to generate content at scale using our generative AI capabilities.”

This year Dreamforce brought together 45,000 customers and partners in person, and over 150,000 trailblazers online.

BW Businessworld is attending Dreamforce 2024 in San Francisco on invitation by Salesforce.