Salesforce said it will commit $15 billion to San Francisco over the next five years in an effort to help businesses adopt artificial intelligence and to deepen its local investment. Company executives framed the move as a strategic push to keep pace with rivals as AI becomes more central to enterprise applications.
Founded and headquartered in San Francisco since 1999, Salesforce has been folding AI capabilities into many of its offerings, including the workplace messaging product Slack. The firm is competing with ServiceNow, Oracle and Microsoft for organizations that want to embed AI into sales, service and other workflows.
Part of the planned spending will underwrite an AI incubator on Salesforce’s San Francisco campus and provide support for companies deploying AI agents, the software that acts like a digital assistant to perform tasks for users. “This $15 billion investment reflects our deep commitment to our hometown — advancing AI innovation, creating jobs and helping companies and our communities thrive,” said CEO Marc Benioff.
The announcement arrives just ahead of Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference scheduled for October 14 to 16 in San Francisco. The company expects roughly 50,000 attendees for the event and estimates it will generate about $130 million in local revenue.
Salesforce, which employs more than 76,000 people worldwide, last week said it will invest $1 billion in Mexico over the next five years; the company has operated there since 2006.
Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff said the new spending aligns with the company’s long-term goals. “If the company wants to remain a leader in an important emerging technology area, it must have a pipeline of talent to innovate and drive the field forward. We already see shortages of AI talent, so this makes sense,” he said.
Shares in Salesforce climbed 2.8% on Monday, though they remain down roughly 28% since the start of the year. On the same day the investment was announced, Salesforce launched Agentforce 360, a new AI platform aimed at business customers.
Though many organizations are still experimenting with AI-driven automation, Salesforce says it has already deployed multiple versions of its “agentic” technology, used by thousands of customers and inside the company’s own operations. The company presents the “Agentic Enterprise” as a model where AI complements workers rather than replaces them; in that setup, AI agents help teams respond more quickly, track leads, provide ongoing service and improve decision making. Salesforce says the objective is higher productivity and stronger customer engagement.
Agentforce 360 bundles four principal elements of that model:
- Agentforce 360 Platform: A framework for building enterprise AI agents that now includes a conversational builder, hybrid reasoning designed for more accurate outcomes, and voice support.
- Data 360: A unified data layer that supplies the context AI systems need. Features such as Intelligent Context and Tableau Semantics are intended to convert raw data into actionable insight.
- Customer 360 Apps: The suite that captures how a company sells, serves and operates, upgraded with AI to deepen understanding of customer behavior and internal processes.
- Slack: A shared workspace where people and AI agents can collaborate, connecting information and actions in real time.
Salesforce says the architecture lets companies create AI agents that draw on trusted data sources, operate across departments and plug directly into existing business processes. The company adds that its open ecosystem gives partners the ability to adapt the platform for different industries.
Last month Salesforce issued a third-quarter revenue forecast that missed analyst expectations, but it expanded its share buyback program by $20 billion.