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Salesforce's CEO thinks it's in the best position to provide unified enterprise data for AI models
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He teased fresh announcements coming at the company's TrailHead DX conference next week
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Scaling adoption of Salesforce Data Cloud is the company's top priority this year
Seven trillion is a hard number to fathom. But that’s how many enterprise records Salesforce’s Data Cloud ingested during the company’s fiscal Q2 2024 (ended January 31, 2024), according to CEO Marc Benioff. And it is that data that positions the company to unlock unrivaled artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for the enterprise, he said.
Speaking during an earnings call this week, Benioff said Salesforce has recently added over 1,000 new customers to Data Cloud, and a quarter of the deals valued over $1 million that it struck in Q4 included the service. The product is already one of Salesforce’s fastest-growing, and increasing adoption of Data Cloud is “our total focus for fiscal year '25,” he added.
In an era that can only be characterized as an AI gold rush, Benioff said Salesforce is sitting on a mine in the form of Data Cloud. That’s because he believes the platform can unlock enterprise data for AI that is otherwise “trapped” in siloed enterprise software and cloud tools. He specifically named popular services from Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
“The gold is the data. And that's why we're so excited about Salesforce because we are one of the very largest repositories of enterprise data and metadata in the world for our customers,” he said.
“Salesforce can unlock this trapped data and bring together all of their business and customer data into one place for AI, all while keeping their data safe and secure.”
He added it plans to showcase new Einstein Copilot builder, prompt builder and model builder capabilities at its TrailHead DX conference next week.
“If you see anyone else being able to deliver on the promise of enterprise AI at the level of quality and scale and capability of Salesforce, I'll be very surprised,” he told analysts on the call.
Originally launched in 2022 as Salesforce Genie, Data Cloud got its current name in 2023. It is integrated into Salesforce’s Einstein AI platform as well as its AI Cloud service.
Last month, Gartner named Salesforce Data Cloud as a leader in its Magic Quadrant ranking for customer data platforms, placing it alongside the likes of Tealium, Treasure Data and Adobe, and above big names like Oracle (which was listed as a Visionary) and SAP (a Niche Player).
Gartner praised Salesforce’s multi-cloud capabilities and strong partner network (it is working with OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere and Hugging Face, among others), but flagged a confusing cost of ownership structure, uneven integration and a high bar of expertise as downsides to the platform.
By the numbers
Here’s a quick rundown of the company’s fiscal Q4 and full-year fiscal 2024 performance.
- FQ4 revenue jumped 11% to $9.3 billion, with full-year revenue also up 11% to $34.9 billion.
- Data Cloud is approaching $400 million in ARR, growing at nearly 90% year over year.
- Closed 86,000 multi-cloud deals and 1,300 Einstein AI deals in fiscal 2024.
- Deals greater than $10 million up 78% year on year.
- The company expects revenue of between $9.12 billion and $9.17 billion in fiscal Q1 2025.
Late last week, Salesforce unveiled a new AI-enabled billing tool for CSPs just in time for Mobile World Congress. We’ll keep an eye on its event next week to see if what Salesforce delivers is everything Benioff promised.