Salesforce Shares Surge 13% After AI-Driven Revenue Growth in Earnings Report

According to MarketWatch, investors are excited about Salesforce's (CRM-US) latest quarterly advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). The software giant reported better-than-expected financial results on Wednesday (26th), with rising demand for its AI agent tools driving performance beyond market expectations.

Salesforce's second quarter of fiscal year 2027 generated $11.35 billion in revenue, an 11% increase year-over-year and surpassing Wall Street's forecast of $11.33 billion.

"AI is creating value at every layer of our platform," said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in a statement. "We're seeing very strong market demand for our AI and data products, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) approaching $4 billion." The company's Agentforce and Data 360 products achieved nearly $3.9 billion in ARR, a more than 210% year-over-year increase.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) for the second quarter reached $5.90, significantly exceeding the consensus estimate of $3.27, largely due to a substantial paper gain from its strategic investment in AI firm Anthropic. Salesforce began investing in Anthropic during its Series C funding round in 2023.

Excluding investment gains, adjusted EPS was $3.37.

Salesforce and Anthropic also deepened their partnership on Wednesday through a strategic collaboration named 'Claudeforce,' integrating Anthropic's Claude directly into the Salesforce platform.

Although Salesforce's stock has declined 23% year-to-date, it has rebounded over the past month. As investors reassess recent bearish sentiment around AI in software stocks, the share price has risen 33% from its late-July lows.

The company also showed promising signs in future order bookings. Remaining performance obligations—contract values expected to convert into revenue within the next 12 months—reached $33.5 billion, slightly above Wall Street's expectation of $33.4 billion.

"AI is amplifying the value across our entire platform," said Robin Washington, CFO and COO of Salesforce. Agentforce and Slack have completed over 7 billion AI agent work units—the metric Salesforce uses to measure AI task completion—with 3.2 billion of those occurring in the second quarter alone.

Washington noted that increased usage of AI agent work units is mutually reinforcing core seat growth.

Salesforce has signaled expectations for organic revenue growth to re-accelerate in the second half of the year. Washington stated that new annual contract value growth is at its strongest level in four years, keeping the company on track toward its goals.

For the third quarter, Salesforce forecasts revenue between $11.42 billion and $11.5 billion, above the $11.415 billion expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.

The company also raised its full-year guidance, projecting annual revenue between $46.1 billion and $46.4 billion, compared to the previous analyst expectation of $46.112 billion.