Most office workers know Slack as the app that never stops buzzing. It is where colleagues swap links, chase updates, and argue about lunch.
Salesforce (CRM) now wants that same app to do something far bigger. Slack has become a hub for communicating with AI agents over the past three months, said Alexa Vignone, the company’s president and chief revenue officer, according to CNBC.
Salesforce sells customer relationship management software, the systems sales and service teams use to track customers.
Its stock became a test case this year for whether AI destroys or feeds business software, a fear CNBC calls the SaaSpocalypse.
The headline from Dreamforce, the company’s annual conference, was a $63 billion revenue target for fiscal 2030. But that figure isn’t new. The Slack shift deserves more attention.
Related: Salesforce unveils AIforce as Benioff takes shot at Microsoft
Slack is the one front door Salesforce owns
Salesforce’s new AIforce layer lets customers use its data and workflows inside other tools, including Anthropic’s Claude and Slack. The company is deliberately placing its product in interfaces it does not control.
Slack is the exception. Salesforce paid $27.1 billion for it in 2021, according to CNBC. Its earnings release shows Slackbot users grew by more than 150% from the prior quarter, and Slack posted its fastest quarterly growth in new annual order value since the acquisition.
That matters because Claudeforce lets Claude access Salesforce data without a Salesforce screen. If workers stop opening Salesforce, Slack becomes the one place the company can still meet them.
The $63 billion target is a repeat, not a raise
Salesforce first set the goal in February, lifting it from more than $60 billion, CNBC reported. Analysts polled by LSEG expected $59.2 billion, according to CNBC, almost unchanged from $59.07 billion in February. Bloomberg shows a higher consensus of $61.4 billion, so the beat depends on who does the counting.
The target also includes an acquisition. The earnings release shows Informatica added $456 million to the latest quarter’s $11.3 billion in revenue. Without it, growth was roughly 6% instead of 11%, a calculation from Salesforce’s own figures.
Chief Financial and Operating Officer Robin Washington said in the release that organic revenue is on track to reaccelerate in the second half. This promise, not the $63 billion figure, is the real test.
Analysts stay bullish, but hold ratings are piling up
Shares closed at $250.54 on Wednesday, Sept. 16, up 67% from their June 22 low but still 5.4% below the start of the year, according to Bloomberg. They ended Friday, Sept. 18, at $237.92, about 5% lower.
The slide came despite a target that beat estimates, which suggests investors saw it as a repeat.
StockAnalysis.com, using S&P Global data, shows 56 analysts with a consensus Buy rating and an average price target of $275.87, about 16% above the Sept. 18 close. However, buy and strong buy ratings fell to 39 from 44 since April, while holds rose to 15 from 11.
Targets rose this week even as ratings split, StockAnalysis.com confirmed:
- A $250 target at Wells Fargo, raised from $230, still carries only a Hold rating.
- A $260 target at UBS, up from $240, also comes with a Hold.
- A $295 target at Freedom Capital Markets, up from $230, arrives with a Buy.
Valuation has slipped, too. Salesforce’s market value was about $198 billion on Sept. 18, down 14% from a year earlier, according to StockAnalysis.com.
The share price is down only about 2%. Buybacks explain most of the gap, cutting the second quarter average share count to 820 million from 956 million, based on the earnings release.
Earnings carry a caveat. A $2.6 billion gain on Salesforce’s Anthropic stake added $2.53 to second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $5.90, according to Salesforce’s release and CNBC.
Analysts expect $16.65 for the fiscal year, StockAnalysis.com confirmed, which puts the stock near 14 times earnings. Without this year’s investment gains, the multiple is closer to 17, a calculation based on Salesforce’s guidance.
Justifying a higher multiple depends on whether Salesforce can successfully monetize the massive volume of AI activity happening under the hood.
More Salesforce:
- Salesforce unveils AIforce as Benioff takes shot at Microsoft
- Salesforce CEO warns AI companies not to repeat this costly mistake
- Salesforce just got the signal bulls were waiting for
Software vendors now compete on data, not screens
Salesforce now counts agentic work units, tasks completed by AI agents across Agentforce and Slack. Those reached 3.2 billion in the second quarter, up 97% from the first, according to the release.
The same release shows core apps, including Slack, grew 8% after adjusting for currency, while data and platform products grew 20%. Growth is faster in the data layer that feeds agents than in the apps workers see.
The first checkpoint comes in October, when Salesforce expects to settle a $25 billion share repurchase, the release noted.
CEO Marc Benioff told Dreamforce that the company will probably sell its Anthropic stake, bought for hundreds of millions of dollars and likely worth tens of billions, to pay off the related debt, CNBC reported.
Other software makers now face the choice Salesforce just made: give up the screen to protect the data.
Related: Salesforce CEO warns AI companies not to repeat this costly mistake