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For whatever reason, Salesforce has failed to capitalize on the AI excitement/craze [1]. Its earnings growth is just not what it used to be (i.e. during the pea

For whatever reason, Salesforce has failed to capitalize on the AI excitement/craze [1]. Its earnings growth is just not what it used to be (i.e. during the peak cloud era of 2010s-202x). A move this aggressive (e.g. pushing companies on Slack to pay 10x more, immediately, or get lost) is not isolated and probably the result of institutional forces. It's not like the random sales person in charge of this decided to be destructive. Salesforce the company is getting squeezed and this is one of the outgrowths of that pressure. And it speaks to the insane dysfunction that must be taking place in the bowels of Salesforce right now, I'm sure it's crazy. [1] https://qz.com/salesforce-beats-q2-earnings-ai https://qz.com/salesforce-beats-q2-earnings-ai

delfinom 1y ago
It's a CRM. AI won't help there, customers already hate getting harassed by cold calls and endless AI support bot loops. They are just hitting market maturity.
tomrod 1y ago
I mean, they really really tried to be the low code provider. But, as far as. I'm aware, no one really likes Salesforce as a product, it's integrations are poor generally.
MontyCarloHall 1y ago
It's really surprising -- Slack is the poster child of an app where AI-based semantic search (e.g. RAG) would be incredibly useful. Yet despite Marc Benioff's grand proclamations about AI [0, 1], you barely see any AI integration into one of Salesforce's most universally-used products. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-says-he-cut-4-000-support-roles-because-of-ai https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/salesforce... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91359024/salesforce-using-ai-artificial-intelligence-for-half-workload-marc-benioff https://www.fastcompany.com/91359024/salesforce-using-ai-art...
- paxys 1y ago
  Salesforce as a company hasn't been innovative in 20 years. It's no surprise that they can't make anything of AI outside of a couple fancy marketing campaigns.
  - Twirrim 1y ago
    I know a few engineers in different companies within Salesforce. They're under lots of pressure to integrate AI everywhere, and leverage it. The way they've talked about it gives me strong "flailing around desperately" vibes, when the smarter money is on making more minimal but targeted efforts, or at least waiting to see what happens the other side of the bubble.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  I don't understand why Slack hasn't fully implemented LLMs. Imagine as a new comer, you don't understand why a product decision was made 3 years ago. You ask Slack to summarize the conversations on why this choice was made based on messages 3 years ago. How powerful is that? Slack can probably charge an extra $10/month/user for this.
  - paxys 1y ago
    Slack does have this. Basic AI summaries are included in all paid plans, and AI search and other features are part of the $20/mo plan.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    Has any company got this feature? Sounds like the kind of thing that sounds good in theory but is hard to actually pull off. To complete this query you'd have to process almost the entirety of the chat history in every channel. Which sounds extremely expensive, and we know LLMs start to go off the rails when you give them too much context.
  - atemerev 1y ago
    Because implementing _useful_ AI features is hard.
Hobadee 1y ago
Slack added AI features for something like ~$5/user/mo. Nobody got the addon because it was stupid. So Slack bundled AI and increased the base subscription by ~$5/user/mo. Nobody uses the AI features still, and we are all $5/user/mo poorer. Source: I work at an MSP and we have a ton of clients on Slack.

delfinom 1y ago

It's a CRM. AI won't help there, customers already hate getting harassed by cold calls and endless AI support bot loops. They are just hitting market maturity.

tomrod 1y ago

I mean, they really really tried to be the low code provider. But, as far as. I'm aware, no one really likes Salesforce as a product, it's integrations are poor generally.

MontyCarloHall 1y ago

It's really surprising -- Slack is the poster child of an app where AI-based semantic search (e.g. RAG) would be incredibly useful. Yet despite Marc Benioff's grand proclamations about AI [0, 1], you barely see any AI integration into one of Salesforce's most universally-used products. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-says-he-cut-4-000-support-roles-because-of-ai https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/salesforce... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91359024/salesforce-using-ai-artificial-intelligence-for-half-workload-marc-benioff https://www.fastcompany.com/91359024/salesforce-using-ai-art...

paxys 1y ago
Salesforce as a company hasn't been innovative in 20 years. It's no surprise that they can't make anything of AI outside of a couple fancy marketing campaigns.
- Twirrim 1y ago
  I know a few engineers in different companies within Salesforce. They're under lots of pressure to integrate AI everywhere, and leverage it. The way they've talked about it gives me strong "flailing around desperately" vibes, when the smarter money is on making more minimal but targeted efforts, or at least waiting to see what happens the other side of the bubble.
aurareturn 1y ago
I don't understand why Slack hasn't fully implemented LLMs. Imagine as a new comer, you don't understand why a product decision was made 3 years ago. You ask Slack to summarize the conversations on why this choice was made based on messages 3 years ago. How powerful is that? Slack can probably charge an extra $10/month/user for this.
- paxys 1y ago
  Slack does have this. Basic AI summaries are included in all paid plans, and AI search and other features are part of the $20/mo plan.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  Has any company got this feature? Sounds like the kind of thing that sounds good in theory but is hard to actually pull off. To complete this query you'd have to process almost the entirety of the chat history in every channel. Which sounds extremely expensive, and we know LLMs start to go off the rails when you give them too much context.
- atemerev 1y ago
  Because implementing _useful_ AI features is hard.

Hobadee 1y ago

Slack added AI features for something like ~$5/user/mo. Nobody got the addon because it was stupid. So Slack bundled AI and increased the base subscription by ~$5/user/mo. Nobody uses the AI features still, and we are all $5/user/mo poorer. Source: I work at an MSP and we have a ton of clients on Slack.