Salesforce Beats Q2 Estimates on Both Lines, Announces New AI Partnership; Shares Jump 13% in Pre-Market

Salesforce, Inc. shares rose about 13% in pre-market trading Thursday as investors reacted to the company's second-quarter beat on both the top and bottom lines and optimistic guidance, alongside the announcement of a new "Claudeforce" partnership with Anthropic.

Nasdaq futures rose 1.06%, while S&P 500 futures gained 0.43%.

Salesforce gained momentum in AI, Slack, and core cloud products, with CEO Marc Benioff noting improvements in bookings, customer retention, and AI adoption following the company's latest quarter.

Benioff Says Salesforce Growth Is Accelerating

Benioff told CNBC's Jim Cramer that Salesforce delivered its strongest net new annualized order value growth in four years. Seats for Agentforce, Sales, Service, and Slack increased year-over-year, while customer churn remained near historic lows.

He also said bookings for Salesforce's A1E and A4X suites more than doubled quarter-over-quarter, while contract durations for both new business and renewals improved.

Agentforce usage grew sixfold, as AI agents more broadly adopted Salesforce through its Model Context Protocol. Benioff said nine of the top ten AI companies use Salesforce and Slack, with their combined spending up 435% year-over-year.

Slack also delivered triple-digit bookings growth in the quarter. Benioff highlighted customers such as Nike, General Motors, and Robinhood as examples of companies standardizing on the platform.

Anthropic Partnership Expands Salesforce's AI Strategy

Benioff said Salesforce's expanded partnership with Anthropic reinforces his view that advanced AI models rely on enterprise data and applications, rather than replacing them.

Salesforce and Anthropic developed Claude Force, which combines Anthropic's Claude with Salesforce's customer data, applications, security controls, and AI tools. Benioff expects the product to help businesses build new applications while extracting more value from information already stored in their systems.

He also emphasized that Salesforce's data foundation is critical for supporting AI models across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and analytics.

Agentforce Expands Across Enterprises and Government

Benioff said more than 450 companies now use Salesforce's IT service management product, including McAfee, which recently switched from ServiceNow.

He also pointed to Salesforce's growing presence in the U.S. government. The U.S. Army expects to process 55 million Agentforce conversations per month, while Salesforce is also working on modernization efforts for the IRS.

Benioff said Salesforce has completed over 5 million autonomous service interactions internally, with approximately 2.5 million cases automatically escalated to human agents when needed.

He added that Salesforce now generates nearly $47 billion in revenue, compared to less than $1 billion when he first appeared on Cramer's show in 2009.

Top ETF Exposure

SmartETFs Advertising & Marketing Technology ETF: 4.11% weight

iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF: 4.86% weight

First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund: 4.66% weight

Significance: Given CRM's heavy weighting in these funds, any significant inflows or outflows from these ETFs could result in automatic buying or selling of the stock.

Analyst Consensus and Recent Actions: The stock holds a Buy rating with an average price target of $233.13. Recent analyst actions include:

Citizens: Market Outperform

Canaccord Genuity: Buy

BTIG: Buy

Price Action

CRM Stock Price Activity: Salesforce shares rose 13.17% to $232.70 in pre-market trading Thursday.