Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, announces that the company will be hiring 2,000 individuals to focus on selling AI products.

• At an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, CEO Marc Benioff announced that Salesforce will hire 2,000 more salespeople with a focus on artificial intelligence.
• Salesforce's AI agent software's second generation will be accessible to customers in February 2025.

On Tuesday, CEO Marc Benioff announced that the company will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, which is double the number the company previously indicated it planned to add a month ago.

A cloud software company that focuses on sales reps, marketers, and customer service agents is among the technology companies looking to increase revenue through generative AI features.

"Benioff announced at a San Francisco event that the company is hiring 2,000 more salespeople to sell its products, with 9,000 referrals already received for these positions. "It's incredible," he said."

Benioff revealed to Bloomberg that the company intends to recruit 1,000 sales representatives specializing in AI.

Salesforce announced that the second generation of its Agentforce technology, which enables customers to create and operate AI agents, will be available in February 2025. With Agentforce, customers can tackle complex questions in Salesforce's Slack communications app using all available data.

Salesforce is expanding its AI sales team despite laying off more than 7,000 employees two years ago to adjust to economic conditions. As of January 31, 2024, the company's headcount was 72,682, a 1% decrease from two years prior, according to filings.

Salesforce's homepage now features an experimental AI agent that can respond to user queries about the company's products. Customers in need of assistance can visit a chat-based help page that conducts 32,000 conversations a week. Currently, about 5,000 are getting escalated to humans as a result of the AI's capabilities, down from 10,000 before, Benioff said.

Microsoft is not showcasing its Copilot-branded AI tools on its website, according to Benioff.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

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