Salesforce: A closer look at Agentforce, other software providers

Yahoo Finance Video and Julie Hyman

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 3:30 AM GMT+9

In this video:

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Salesforce stock (CRM) is trending slightly in Thursday’s trading session after releasing fourth quarter earnings results that topped estimates. As software companies recover from February’s waves of AI-induced sell-offs, how do investors feel about Salesforce’s Agentforce services?

Guggenheim Securities senior research analyst and senior managing director of software, John DiFucci, assesses the performance of Agentforce business in Salesforce’s last quarter, while also giving his broader view on other software providers.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Catalysts.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

So let’s dig into Salesforce specifically then. I mean, what’s your assessment of how Agent Force is doing? Um, it it feels like the vibes around it are not great, but it did book what, $800 million in revenue. Um, do you think that Salesforce is doing the right things on the agentic front?

00:26 Speaker B

I think Salesforce is doing the right things. Um, it’s a little bit of a loaded question. So, Salesforce, um, you had like a few questions in there.

00:43 Speaker B

How are they doing with Agent Force? Um, Agent Force was a concept. It wasn’t a product when they came out with it. And, you know, they Salesforce’s strength is not necessarily innovation and technology, it is marketing, and that’s what it was. Now, they have some product now. They bought some small companies that brought in some talent to try to build it, but they’re way behind. And, um, I don’t know if they’re ever going to get there. I mean, you’re talking about a company that was a leader during the last paradigm. And if AI is a new paradigm shift, which I and I think it is, and I think a lot of people think it is, I saw your previous guests. Um, usually, some of the leaders from the previous paradigm are no longer leaders after that. And Salesforce has a big risk of that happening to happening to them.

02:02 Speaker A

Um, and do you think that there are companies within software that are more innovative that that can, you know, survive and thrive in this cycle?

02:18 Speaker B

Um, I do. I I think, um, the ones that are more likely to do that are those that have large businesses that have something that is going to continue to feed them cash flow where they focus on a shift. So, I think a great example of that is is Microsoft with Azure. Uh, Microsoft, when AWS came out and they they went after initially the SMB, remember that was the first thing. And Microsoft was a dominant player for SMB infrastructure software, which is what AWS was going after. So, Microsoft came out with Azure. and and but but Microsoft has two near monopolies in Windows and office where they could support the investment over years of not being profitable, um, and and pouring money into that. Now, look what they’ve done. They were able to do that. And and now it’s a it’s it’s sort of the third leg of the stool for Microsoft with Azure.

03:39 Speaker B

It’s hard to do that. Like with Salesforce, it’s not like just marketing cloud has to change, the whole company has to. And I don’t know if I don’t know if they can do it. It’s a big company and the problem is they haven’t been very innovative. You asked the question, who might be able to do it? I think Workday has a better shot at it. Workday’s always been a technology innovative company. Salesforce’s innovation was saying, hey, let’s provide a SAS solution. Let’s provide an application through the internet.

04:22 Speaker B

So you don’t need software anymore. It’s software as a service. That was their innovation. That was in the late 90s. Like they really haven’t been very innovative since. They’ve bought companies along the way and we’ll see. They bought some companies that’s brought in innovative people. So maybe they can do it. It’s going to be very difficult though.

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