Salesforce CEO Dismisses ‘SaaSpocalypse’ Fears as ‘Nonsense’ After CRM’s Record Q2: ‘Time for It to Stop’

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.

Salesforce Inc. delivered a record second quarter with accelerating bookings and revenue, prompting CEO Marc Benioff to forcefully dismiss industry fears of an AI-driven software collapse as the "nonsense of this SaaSpocalypse."

Benioff declared it is "time for it to stop" when addressing dire market predictions that artificial intelligence would cannibalize enterprise software seats and destroy pricing power.

Defying skeptics, Salesforce posted its strongest net new Annual Order Value (AOV) growth in four years, while attrition remained near record lows.

Driven by this underlying booking momentum, second-quarter revenue rose 11% year-over-year to $11.35 billion, and current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) accelerated 14% in constant currency. Salesforce also raised its full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to a range of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion.

Fueling this operational performance is a landmark partnership with Anthropic to launch "Claudeforce." The collaboration brings Anthropic's Claude AI natively into Salesforce, enabling a dynamic interface that reasons and acts across enterprise data, workflows, and Slack channels.

Benioff hailed the pairing of the "number one AI" and "number one CRM" as the future benchmark for how enterprise systems will operate. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei agreed in a CNBC interview, describing the integration as "bigger than the sum of its parts."

Meanwhile, Salesforce's internal AI traction accelerated rapidly, with Agentforce ARR exceeding $1.5 billion, up over 240% year-over-year.

Industry watchers on social media reacted swiftly to the strong second-quarter performance and the Anthropic alliance. Hedge Fund manager and Founder of LIQN.ai, Jared Kubin , observed that Anthropic's founders "did a 180 on software," shifting from predicting major job losses to becoming "HUGE salesforce customers."

So Sam and Dario just did a 180 on software. From we are going to nuke the industry & major jobs losses incoming … to…."we are HUGE salesforce customers" software sniffed out the bottom in April … market is whicked smaht — Jared Kubin (@JaredKubin) August 27, 2026

So Sam and Dario just did a 180 on software. From we are going to nuke the industry & major jobs losses incoming … to…."we are HUGE salesforce customers" software sniffed out the bottom in April … market is whicked smaht

Jared Kubin (@JaredKubin) August 27, 2026