Salesforce opened Dreamforce 2026 in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 15, with a keynote from CEO Marc Benioff that unveiled AIforce, a new intelligent interface layer designed to pull trapped value from enterprise data across the company's core platforms. The announcement signals a shift toward agentic interfaces that could change how sales teams interact with CRM, Slack, and analytics tools daily.
AIforce and the end of manual software
Benioff addressed what he called "crazy nonsense about the SaaSpocalypse" directly. "This is not about the end of software, but it may be about the end of software that makes humans do all the work," he said. AIforce sits atop Salesforce's existing products - including Agentforce, Customer 360, and Data 360 - and uses metadata to surface patterns and answers without retaining customer data in its models.
"Your data is your data, it doesn't go into the models," Benioff said. "Salesforce products are built with zero data retention... you aren't training any other models."
The company also announced Koa, a new CRM model built with Nvidia on its Nemotron platform. Koa was trained on 27 years of Salesforce data and fine-tuned with public and synthetic data. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joined Benioff on stage, describing AI as "a new industrial revolution" and urging businesses not to abandon the technology if early results disappoint. "The most important thing - don't get left behind," Huang said.
Agentforce hits 30,000 customers
Patrick Stokes, Salesforce's new President of Applications and Marketing, reported that Agentforce now serves 30,000 customers since its launch two years ago. The platform has become what Stokes called the number one agentic platform available today. Siemens was highlighted as a customer using Agentforce to drive sales outcomes, with CEO Roland Busch joining the keynote for a brief conversation.
Slack also received attention. Benioff noted the company has invested "a ton of money" in the six years since acquiring it. New tools include Slackforce, an AI layer for the messaging platform, and Slack Code, which lets teams code collaboratively. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appeared to discuss Claude Cowork, which integrates with Salesforce and Slack to help workers drill into data specifics and identify issues that need attention.
Interface shifts and the agentic future
Benioff framed the current moment as the latest in a series of interface revolutions - from command line to GUI, web, mobile, and now AI. "This is the next generation of applications and the way we interact with them," he said. Stokes reinforced the point: "Other companies think their product is the UI - that's not what we think."
Amodei, speaking on AI adoption, said that even if the technology were frozen today, businesses would be using only 5-10% of its possible value. "There's so much diffusion left," he said. The conversation touched on safety, with Huang calling it "job one" and an engineering problem, not a trade-off against progress. "It's a false choice - you can definitely have both at the same time," he said.
Why this matters for sales professionals
AIforce and the expansion of Agentforce mean sales teams will increasingly work alongside AI agents that can surface account insights, flag risks, and automate routine CRM tasks without requiring manual data entry or report generation. The zero data retention policy addresses a persistent enterprise concern about proprietary sales data leaking into shared models. For sales professionals evaluating how to integrate these tools into daily workflows, understanding agentic interfaces is becoming a practical requirement - not a theoretical exercise. Courses focused on AI for Sales and AI Automation Courses & Certifications can help teams build the skills to configure and supervise these agents effectively.
Your membership also unlocks:
