{"id":10612,"date":"2025-12-04T18:40:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T00:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10612"},"modified":"2025-12-04T18:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T00:40:21","slug":"the-data-foundation-for-ai-starts-paying-off-for-salesforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10612","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018data foundation\u2019 for AI starts paying off for Salesforce"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/div>\n

They say things move faster in the AI age, and on Wednesday, Salesforce delivered the latest example.<\/p>\n

Salesforce announced its third-quarter results for the 2026 fiscal year on Wednesday. The high-level numbers looked good.\u00a0Revenue for the quarter was $10.3 billion, up 9% year over year. The company raised its full fiscal year 2026 revenue guidance from $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion, representing a 9% to 10% year-over-year increase.<\/p>\n

But it was the performance of Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) and Agentforce<\/a> that really stood out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Agentforce and Data 360 products are the momentum drivers, hitting nearly $1.4 billion in ARR \u2014 an explosive 114% year-over-year gain,\u201d said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce, during the earnings call. \u201cWe now have over 9,500 paid Agentforce deals and 3.2 trillion tokens processed, underscoring our leadership in building the Agentic Enterprise and driving real outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: Why is Salesforce partnering with the biggest names in AI?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What a difference 10 months makes<\/h2>\n

It was less than a year ago, at the February 2025 earnings call, that Salesforce executives said a meaningful contribution to earnings from Agentforce<\/a> was more than a year away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are incredibly excited about the customer momentum we are seeing. However, the adoption cycle is still early as we focus on deployment with our customers,\u201d said Amy Weaver, who at the time was serving as Salesforce president and CFO. \u201cAs a result, we are assuming a modest contribution to revenue in fiscal \u201926. We expect the momentum to build throughout the year, driving a more meaningful contribution in fiscal \u201927.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even back in February, momentum for Data Cloud (now Data 360) was building. At the time, Salesforce reported that nearly half of the Fortune 100 were both AI and Data Cloud customers, and that all of Salesforce\u2019s top 10 wins in Q4 included Data and AI.<\/p>\n

That was important to note because before companies can unleash agents on their customers and employees, they need to get their data in order. Data 360, with unified data and guardrails, does exactly that.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Salesforce referred to Data 360, Agentforce and other infrastructure tools like the recently acquired Informatica<\/a> as the backbone of its \u201cdata foundation,\u201d on which AI agents will be built. And it had numbers to demonstrate that the foundation is in good shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n