At its earnings call, Salesforce goes all out to tell everyone: AI does not mean we are dead, and it is not the first time ...

Salesforce reported fourth-quarter revenue of $10.7 billion, up 13% year-ver-year, and annual revenue of $41.5 billion, a 10% increase boosted by its $8 billion acquisition of Informatica. The net income reached $7.46 billion, and the company projected revenue between $45.8 billion and $46.2 billon for the year ahead. The remaining performance obligation (RPO) of the company stood at $72 billion, signalling strong contracted future revenue. Despite this growth and solid numbers, the investor anxiety is looming over the rise of AI agents potentially undermining the SaaS business model. According to a report by TechCrunch, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff addressed this issue during the earnings call of the company. He said that AI does not mean that we are dead and also this is not the first time we are witnessing something like this.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff addresses ‘SaaSpocalypse’ fears

As per the TechCrunch report, CEO Marc Benioff directly tackled the so-called “SaaSpocalypse” during the earnings call, mentioning the term multiple times. “You’ve heard about the SaaSpocalypse? And it isn’t our first. We’ve had a few of them,” he said, adding humorously, “If there is a SaaSpocalypse, it may be eaten by the Sasquatch.”




Benioff also said that the rise of AI made the companies use a lot of SaaS because it just got better with agents.

Along with this, in order to reassure the shareholders, Salesforce also announced 6% dividend increase to $0.44 per share and unveiled a massive $50 billion share buyback program. These measures aim to bolster investor confidence by reducing share supply and signaling financial strength.

Salesforce reinventing the earnings call

Salesforce also revamped its earnings presentation, blending elements of a podcast and infomercial. CEO Benioff interviewed CEOs from SharkNinja, Wyndham Hotels, and SaaStr, all of whom praised Salesforce’s new AI agent products. Salesforce also introduced a new metric, Agentic Work Units (AWU), designed to measure whether AI agents complete meaningful tasks, such as updating records, rather than just generating text.

Along with this, Salesforce also presented its own architectural vision of the AI future, positioning SaaS platforms like itself as owning most of the tech stack, with AI model makers commoditized at the bottom. This directly countered OpenAI’s Frontier enterprise agent, which envisions SaaS providers relegated to the background.