Two Wall Street analysts on Monday clashed on the outlook for Salesforce (CRM) stock amid the software maker's push into artificial intelligence products. A D.A. Davidson analyst downgraded Salesforce stock to under-perform while a Bank of America analysts reiterated a buy rating.
D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said in a report: "We believe Salesforce is neglecting its core business in an effort to pursue a premature AI opportunity, changing the nature of the company enough for us to downgrade to under-perform from neutral." He added: "We see this as the year Salesforce completes its transformation from SaaS pioneer to late-stage technology company and perennial share donor."
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On thestock market today, Salesforce stock fell more than 4% to 234.91 amid a broad sell-off in technology companies.
Further, Salesforce is incorporating AI agent technology into its broad array of customer management, customer service and marketing automation products.In late 2024, Salesforce and other software makers began shifting their marketing strategy away from generative AI "copilots" to autonomous, goal-driven AI "agents."
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Copilots — basically conversational chatbot interfaces — aim to improve worker productivity but rely on human prompts. Agents execute multistep tasks on behalf of users by solving problems and taking action.
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"Our Agentforce checks indicate betting the company on AI is too early," said Luria. "We heard from Agentforce customers that they love the early implementations of Agentforce, but also heard that there are significant obstacles to deploying them. Many of these customers do not have the appropriate data stack nor do they have confidence in the return on investment."
Salesforce introduced Agentforce at its Dreamforce customer conference in September. In December, Salesforce announced an upgraded version, Agentforce 2.0, along with its "Digital Labor Platform."
At Bank of America, analyst Brad Sills holds a different view.
"In our report published in January, we outlined the case for Agentforce to drive an incremental 1% to 2% points of CRPO (current remaining performance obligations) growth as early as second half fiscal 2026. The choppier (economic) macro since January likely pushes this to first half 2027. However, we remain bullish on Agentforce, given the strength in Data Cloud ($900 million annual recurring revenue in fiscal Q4 2025,) up from $400 million (a year earlier)."
Salesforce sells software under a subscription model. Its software helps businesses organize and handle sales operations and customer relationships. The company has expanded into marketing, e-commerce and data analytics.
In 2025, Salesforce stock has retreated nearly 30%. Further, Salesforce is among AI stocksto watch.
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Follow Reinhardt Krause on X, formerly Twitter,@reinhardtk_techfor updates on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
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