9. Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holdings in Q1 2026: 101
TD Cowen discussed enterprise software firm Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s shares on May 22nd. It reiterated a Buy rating and a $250 share price target. The financial firm remarked that Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) could benefit from strong demand in the data cloud sector. Citi cut the firm’s share price target to $188 from $200 on May 12 and kept a Neutral rating. The bank explained that Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s partners were reporting longer deal cycles and more renewals. Cramer discussed Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s agentic AI strategy and kept the faith with the firm:
“And Salesforce is up. No it was down a little bit, 177. Look there’s just a lot of people who say, wait a second, the RPO, their remaining performance obligation, not that good. The second quarter is not supposed to be good. There are a lot of things to pick at, Tableu was not good. The commerce cloud which had been a very important cloud was not good. They bought Informatica to make the numbers, there were just a number of holes but you have to believe that they have got an agentic strategy that’s going to pay off. And I believe it will. That was one of the reasons why yesterday I said, listen, I’m okay.”
Artisan Value Fund discussed Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“Among the portfolio’s biggest decliners were Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), Accenture, Humana and PayPal Holdings, each of which dropped by 20% or more during the quarter. Salesforce is the largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software, a mission-critical tool for most businesses. Growth has slowed over the past year, unsettling investors who worry that generative AI could lead to the “death of software”—disrupting SaaS (software-as-a service) akin to how SaaS disrupted incumbents in the early 2000s. Salesforce, after all, pioneered the SaaS model when it launched in 1999. The fear is that SaaS could lose in multiple ways: Customers might require fewer seats as AI boosts productivity, or generative-AI companies might replace traditional SaaS applications with next-generation, DIY software that enterprises of all sizes can build themselves. A counterargument is that software platforms like Salesforce are already deeply embedded in critical customer workflows and may therefore be well positioned to deploy AI in ways that strengthen their moats. Recent softness appears more tied to a generally slowing macro environment than to AI disruption, which we believe will take years to unfold. Salesforce maintains a wide economic moat as the leading CRM provider and remains an active innovator.”
