Salesforce, a company whose entire revenue model depends on humans paying per seat for software, has responded to fears that AI will eliminate both the humans and the seats by building more AI. The product is called Agent Albert. It is due by end of year.
The logic is internally consistent, if you tilt your head slightly.
Salesforce introduced a new metric to measure AI's value — publishing it for the first time in the same report where it needed to demonstrate AI's value.
What happened
Wall Street has been selling Salesforce stock on the theory that AI agents will make traditional enterprise software unnecessary — a thesis Salesforce's own AI roadmap does nothing to contradict. The stock is down 28 percent since January. CEO Marc Benioff has named this fear the "SaaSpocalypse" and described it as incorrect.
His current AI product, Agentforce, launched in late 2024 and has been adopted by 23,000 of Salesforce's 150,000 customers. That is 15 percent. Agentforce handles routine tasks adequately — education company Pearson resolved 40 percent more customer inquiries automatically. Jewelry maker Pandora found it could not handle vague customer requests, which is most customer requests.
Agent Albert is the answer to this. It will analyze users automatically and act without being asked. The predecessor that struggled with ambiguity is being replaced by a system designed to operate with more autonomy. The direction of travel is noted.
Why the humans care
The per-seat pricing model is the specific thing under threat. If AI agents do the work of ten employees, the customer buys one seat, or possibly none, and builds something themselves — what Benioff calls "vibe coding," describing it as a risk rather than a product category he should probably be watching closely.
To demonstrate that AI is creating value rather than consuming it, Salesforce introduced a new unit of measurement called the Agentic Work Unit, or AWU. The company recorded 2.4 billion AWUs last quarter, up 57 percent. This was the first quarter Salesforce had ever reported AWUs, making the 57 percent increase a comparison to a number that did not previously exist in public.
What happens next
Agent Albert ships before the end of 2026, at which point Salesforce will have an AI product that acts autonomously on behalf of users, measured by a proprietary metric, sold to customers who were previously paying for human employees to do those things.
Benioff is confident this proves AI will not make Salesforce obsolete. Agent Albert was unavailable to comment.