Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) spent its fiscal 2027 second quarter proving a point it has been arguing for months: that artificial intelligence is expanding its business rather than replacing it. The company used its August 26 earnings call to unveil Claudeforce, a joint product with Anthropic that layers Claude’s reasoning on top of Salesforce’s customer data, while posting numbers that gave management fresh ammunition against the idea that AI agents make traditional software obsolete.
A Platform Leaning Into Agents Instead Of Losing To Them
The headline metric was Agentforce annual recurring revenue crossing $1.5 billion, up more than 240% year over year, with AI and data ARR nearing $3.9 billion after growing over 210%. That growth showed up in usage too. Customers generated 3.2 billion Agentic Work Units in the quarter, a 97% jump from the prior quarter, and agentic activity through Model Context Protocol and Claude calls surged sixfold as customers moved past standard software interfaces.
Slackbot became the company’s fastest adopted AI product ever, reaching 1 million active users just five months after launch and growing 150% quarter over quarter. Current remaining performance obligation climbed 14% in constant currency to $33.5 billion, a point ahead of guidance, while net new annual order value growth hit its strongest level in four years. Bookings from the premium Agentforce 1 Edition and Agentforce for Apps bundles more than doubled from the prior quarter, and contract terms lengthened across every segment.
On the data side, the Data 360 platform ingested 104 trillion records, up 355% year over year, with Zero Copy architecture usage climbing 731%. Nine of the top 10 AI companies now run on Salesforce and Slack, and their combined spending rose 435% year over year, a detail management used to argue that frontier AI firms depend on CRM infrastructure rather than displacing it. Free cash flow reached $1.1 billion, up 81% year over year, and the U.S. Army expanded its contract to potentially drive up to 55 million monthly Agentforce conversations.
Where The Growth Story Gets Complicated
Not every line told a clean growth story. Non-GAAP operating margin actually slipped slightly to 34.1% from 34.3% a year earlier, even as revenue and earnings per share climbed. Overall revenue growth remained a comparatively modest 11%, and management pointed to continued volatility in licensed revenue within its integration and analytics segments, even as Slack and Agentforce carried the results. The raised full-year guidance also comes with an asterisk. Of the $300 million constant currency increase to fiscal 2027 revenue guidance, only $100 million reflects organic momentum, while $200 million depends on the anticipated closings of the Contentful and Fin acquisitions in the coming weeks, deals that have not yet closed.
At the same time, management said the updated guidance now absorbs a $100 million foreign exchange headwind from a stronger dollar, a reminder that currency swings can erase some of the operational gains the AI push is producing. The broader bet on Claudeforce and deeper Anthropic integration also ties a meaningful part of Salesforce’s next act to a partnership and a product still in its earliest days.
Salesforce Vs. The Skeptics In The Market’s Eyes
Hedge fund ownership of Salesforce slipped from 101 funds to 99 in the most recent quarter, a modest pullback rather than a rush to the exits. Short interest sits at just 3.74% of float, which suggests organized skepticism against the stock remains fairly light. As of August 31, the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 18.52, a multiple that does not scream AI hype pricing given the growth rates management touted on the call. That combination suggests that the market has not fully made up its mind about how much credit to give Salesforce for its AI transition.
The Question Dreamforce Will Have To Answer
Salesforce’s quarter gives both sides of the AI debate something to point to. The bulls can note accelerating CRPO, record net new AOV growth, and an Agentforce business scaling into the billions with usage still climbing fast. The bears can note that operating margin dipped slightly, licensed revenue stayed choppy, and a chunk of the raised guidance leans on acquisitions that have not closed yet. For the AI transformation story to keep holding up, Claudeforce and the broader Agentforce push will need to convert usage growth into durable margin expansion rather than just top-line acceleration.
READ NEXT: 10 Best Future Stocks to Buy Under $10 and 12 Best Performing Semiconductor Stocks to Invest In.
Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.
Hedge Fund Resource Center