{"id":42389,"date":"2026-05-18T10:34:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/42389\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T10:34:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:34:35","slug":"salesforce-to-spend-300-million-on-anthropic-tokens-in-2026-ceo-marc-benioff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/42389\/","title":{"rendered":"Salesforce to spend $300 million on Anthropic tokens in 2026: CEO Marc Benioff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff<\/a> says the customer relationship software company expects to spend nearly $300 million on Anthropic tokens in 2026, with a large share of that linked to coding work and AI-powered software development<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the All-In podcast, Benioff said AI coding tools<\/a> are helping engineers work faster and more efficiently rather than replacing them completely. He described coding agents as \u201cawesome\u201d and said they are helping reduce software development costs<\/a> while increasing output.<\/p>\n

Hiring shift
The comments come after Salesforce decided not to hire software engineers this year. In January 2025, Benioff said the company had improved engineering productivity by more than 30% through the use of Agentforce and other AI systems.<\/p>\n

Even though engineering hiring was paused, Salesforce continued recruiting in other departments. \u201cWe will have more salespeople next year because we really need to explain to people exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So, we will probably add another 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople in the short term,\u201d he had said at the time.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s impact on jobs
Benioff has also pushed back against concerns that AI will remove entry-level jobs entirely. According to him, the technology is instead creating new kinds of opportunities.<\/p>\n

In fact, as recently as April, the Salesforce chief said in a post on X that the company would hire 1,000 graduates and interns. They are expected to support growing AI products such as Agentforce and Headless360.<\/p>\n

Benioff has also said that Salesforce\u2019s roughly 15,000 engineers are now increasingly working alongside AI systems, including Anthropic models, OpenAI Codex and Cursor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they start to use these models, they\u2019re now working not only with the AI, but agents to help them code \u2014 and they can even become somewhat supervisory over these agents,\u201d Benioff said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut still, those engineers are needed. The model still cannot operate autonomously,\u201d the Salesforce chief added. \u201cWe\u2019re not at that level yet of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bigger AI push
The increased spending on Anthropic tokens reflects Salesforce\u2019s broader push into artificial intelligence across its business. In June 2025, in an interview with Bloomberg, Benioff said that AI is already responsible for 30-50% of Salesforce\u2019s total workload.<\/p>\n

The company has already invested more than $300 million in Anthropic and reportedly owns a stake in the AI startup.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Agentforce has grown into an $800 million annual recurring revenue business. Slack, another Salesforce product, has also introduced new AI features powered by Anthropic\u2019s Claude models.<\/p>\n

Benioff has described the shift towards AI systems as a \u201cdigital labour revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the customer relationship software company expects to spend nearly $300 million on Anthropic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25888,5881,25890,25887,53,25688,2940,25886,25825,25691,25889],"class_list":["post-42389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anthropic","tag-agentforce-ai","tag-ai-coding-tools","tag-ai-job-opportunities","tag-ai-powered-software-development","tag-anthropic","tag-digital-labour-revolution","tag-marc-benioff","tag-salesforce-anthropic-tokens","tag-salesforce-hiring","tag-slack-ai-features","tag-software-development-costs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}