Salesforce’s Agentic Ambitions: Buy Now or Buy Later?

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Beneath the polished veneer of Dreamforce’s annual celebration, Salesforce (CRM) has unveiled a new manifesto: to amass $60 billion in revenue by 2030, sans its Informatica acquisition, while juggling growth and margins with the grace of a tightrope walker wearing roller skates. One imagines the boardroom erupted in applause, for what enterprise software executive does not adore the spectacle of self-aggrandizement?

The company’s wager on the “agentic enterprise” is a masterstroke of technocratic jargon. Here, AI-those intangible minions of code-is to automate sales staff, service departments, marketing budgets, and data pipelines, all while drinking coffee birthed from their own latte-powered dreams. The crux, naturally, lies in the company’s “unified data and workflows,” a term which, for all its robustness, conveniently ignores the ironies of centralizing chaos.

Grandiloquent Targets

The $60 billion target implies an annual delusion of 10% organic growth-a figure as plausible as a CEO guaranteeing shareholder returns during an asteroid apocalypse. Complementing this, the “50 by FY30” target-a sum of growth and margin, neatly reaching 50-reads like a scribbled note during a wine-soaked brainstorm session: “We must sound ambitious, just not so ambitious they think us mad.”

In the second quarter, Agentforce’s ARR danced up 120% to $1.2 billion, with $440 million already sown into “agentic AI.” Some 12,000 customers have embraced this digital utopia, though the adjective “adopted” feels generous to those left sifting through the rubble of their CRM’s new “intelligent” segregation of leads.

“We’re leading the next great transformation in business-the era of the Agentic Enterprise,” one Benioff declared, his Georgian tones echoing like a practiced pavane. A brave claim, though one wonders if his AI agents are entrusted with proofreading press releases.

Numbers, Numbers, and More Numbers

CURRENT REMAINING PERFORMANCE OBLIGATIONS rose 11%, while subscription revenue crept up 11%. The firm now dares forecast full-year revenue between $41.1 and $41.3 billion-a range so solemnly median that even Vulture Capital would blush at the restraint. The non-GAAP operating margin, meanwhile, tiptoes toward 34.1%, perhaps tempted by the scent of venture capital largesse.

Yet CRM trades at 36 times earnings, a valuation which might raise an eyebrow were it encountered in a taverna and not a Bloomberg terminal. For a company whose margins “dance in the mid-thirties,” as the report charmingly puts it, such a multiplier is as prudent as chucking diamonds at a drought.

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Investors face a choice: adopt Salesforce as a speculative albatross or a speculative asset. The former seems more likely, given the probabilities of macroeconomic frost and sales cycles stretching like a rather unfortunate steak. The “50 by FY30” metric may someday appear as sensible as a coal-fired snowplow-but for now, it’s a ledger of hubris.

The stock, in its current state, straddles the line between curiosity and indulgence. For those of a venturesome disposition, a sliver position might suffice-a hedge against the inevitable academic papers yet to be written on the bankruptcy of AI-driven CRM euphoria. 🦑

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2025-10-18 10:54