For many salespeople, the workday starts with a chore. They open Salesforce, click through accounts and update deal fields before the first call.
At Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, that chore had already moved somewhere else. Its sales teams were working in Salesforce through Claude rather than Salesforce’s own interface, Patrick Stokes, Salesforce’s president of applications and marketing, told CIO.com in August.
That habit sits at the center of the biggest debate around Salesforce Inc. (CRM), whose software helps companies track customers, deals and service requests. Its stock has become a referendum on whether AI agents help or hurt business software.
Salesforce insists the shift works in its favor, with Stokes arguing that agentic use “dramatically increases the value of Salesforce.” Investors spent most of 2026 betting the other way.
In February, a Jefferies trader coined the term “SaaSpocalypse” as fear of AI agents sent software stocks tumbling. Salesforce did not escape the rout.
Also read: BofA splits software into winners and losers as AI agents arrive
Bank of America analyst Tal Liani took up that fear directly in his report, “Upgrading to Buy: a sound strategy that addresses the AI risks and opportunities.” According to the BofA note shared with TheStreet, the firm raised Salesforce to Buy from Underperform and lifted its price target to $285 from $160.
Even so, the stock remains about 15% below its 52-week high, according to the BofA note.
Salesforce is betting the screen matters less
According to the note, Bank of America’s earlier caution centered on disintermediation, the risk that AI cuts Salesforce out of its own customer relationships.
The note frames the shift neatly: “AI 3.0 is the interface.” In plain English, a worker may type a request into Claude or Slack and never open the underlying app at all.
That sounds like bad news for a company whose brand lives on a login page. However, BofA argues the screen was never where most of the value sat. The rules on who can see a record and what an agent may change still live inside Salesforce.
Think of it as a building’s front door versus its wiring. Tenants can use a new entrance, but the lights still run on the old circuits. According to the BofA note, reaching Salesforce data “is not equivalent to replacing the applications” that govern it.
Salesforce is charging more, not less, for AI access
Instead of discounting as the screen loses importance, Salesforce is raising the price of access. Its new top tier, which bundles Claudeforce, costs 39% more than the Advanced edition, according to the BofA note. That is a bold bet that customers will pay extra to use Salesforce inside someone else’s chatbot.
Early adoption looks real. Agentforce annual recurring revenue topped $1.5 billion last quarter, according to Salesforce’s second-quarter results.
Yet Salesforce widened that metric in the second quarter to include Slackbot and Headless 360, which lets AI agents reach Salesforce without its screens. BofA warns that shifting definitions make it too early to judge how durable the spending is.
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BofA’s forecasts barely moved, but its trust did
The most revealing detail sits in BofA’s model. The firm left its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast unchanged at $46.3 billion and nudged later years only slightly.
What changed is the price BofA will pay for durability. According to the BofA note, the new target values Salesforce at 16 times its expected 2027 free cash flow on an enterprise value basis, up from 9 times. That moves Salesforce from a deep discount to a modest premium over the 15 times peer average.
That makes this a bet on how big customers behave, not on one strong quarter. BofA flags where it could crack:
- Customer payback is unproven at scale. The success stories Salesforce highlights were selected by the company, BofA notes.
- AI revenue is still small, which makes slower adoption the main near-term risk, according to the note.
- Third-party AI interfaces could capture more of the value, one of the downside risks BofA lists.
Big companies may decide which software survives
The upgrade is no blanket pardon for software. BofA describes a split market in which smaller firms may switch to cheaper AI-native tools while large enterprises keep the systems that hold their rules and data. BofA still rates Adobe (ADBE) and HubSpot (HUBS) Underperform, according to the note, so it is picking winners rather than lifting the sector.
Meanwhile, Salesforce chose to build itself into Claude rather than fight it, unveiling a Salesforce in Claude plugin in late August, according to a company press release. Shares jumped 14% in extended trading that day as the company also raised its forecast, Reuters reported.
The bigger question reaches well beyond one stock. If Salesforce can charge a premium for customers who rarely log in, every software company that owns deep business rules gets a new playbook. If it cannot, the login page may turn out to have been the product all along.
The real test comes with Salesforce’s next quarterly report. Watch whether Claudeforce and the new top tier start showing up in disclosed revenue, not just in partnership headlines.
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