AI tools are shaking up the workplace again, and this time it’s hitting one of the biggest names in tech: Salesforce.
Marc Benioff on the Shift to AI
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed in a recent podcast that the company has cut thousands of support roles thanks to AI-powered agents.
The number of employees in customer support dropped from about 9,000 to 5,000.
Benioff described the past several months as some of the most exciting of his career, saying AI has transformed the way Salesforce handles customer requests and sales leads.
“There were over 100 million leads we hadn’t followed up on in the past 26 years,” Benioff explained. “Now, with AI agents, every person who contacts us gets a response.”
That’s a dramatic shift for a company that employed more than 76,000 people across divisions at the start of the year.
What Are AI Agents and How Do They Work?
AI agents aren’t just chatbots.
They break complex tasks into smaller, manageable steps, each targeting a specific action. This makes them more reliable for handling customer support and sales queries.
At Salesforce, the system now runs on an “omnichannel supervisor” that helps both AI and human staff collaborate with customers. Currently, about half of all customer conversations are handled by AI, while the rest still need human attention.
Benioff compared the handoff between humans and AI to self-driving cars: sometimes the AI can drive itself, but at other times it signals the driver to take over.
Key Functions of Salesforce’s AI Agents:
- Responding to long-neglected sales leads
- Managing routine support questions
- Passing complex or sensitive issues back to human staff
- Boosting overall productivity by freeing people from repetitive tasks
Will AI Mean More Layoffs in Tech?
Not all tech leaders agree that AI adoption leads to job cuts. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, for instance, has argued that AI agents will actually create more opportunities.
He says his company already uses AI agents for tasks like cybersecurity, chip design, and software testing.
Huang explained it this way: when companies grow more productive, the gains often translate into stronger earnings or faster business growth, not just layoffs.
Microsoft executive Asha Sharma also shared that AI agents could reshape management structures, possibly reducing middle layers of oversight and changing how teams are organized.
The Bigger Picture: A Workforce in Transition
Salesforce’s move highlights a larger trend in the workplace. AI isn’t just about speeding up processes; it’s changing how companies organize people, tasks, and decision-making.
For employees, this can feel unsettling. Losing 4,000 jobs is no small matter. Yet, the flip side is that AI may open doors to new roles that didn’t exist before, especially in areas like AI oversight, training, and customer experience design.
A Snapshot of Salesforce’s AI Impact
| Area | Before AI | After AI | Impact |
| Support staff count | 9,000 | 5,000 | 4,000 roles cut |
| Unanswered sales leads | 100M+ | Nearly 0 | AI agents closing the gap |
| Share of conversations handled by AI | Few | 50% | Major shift in workload |
| Employee focus | Repetitive tasks | Complex issues | Better use of human talent |
Looking Ahead
AI adoption at Salesforce is a powerful case study in how technology reshapes jobs. Some workers lose their roles, others gain new responsibilities, and companies become leaner.
The open question remains: will AI ultimately create more opportunities than it removes? Or will the workforce continue to shrink in certain areas while growing in others?
What’s clear is that AI agents are no longer a distant concept. They are already here, and they’re rewriting the rules of work.
