Salesforce: Winning or Losing?

December 29, 2025

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

One of the people on my team told me at our holiday staff lunch (I had a coupon, thank you), that Salesforce signed up thousands of new customers because of AI. Lunch included one holiday beverage, so I dismissed this statement as one of those wild and crazy end-of-year statements from a person who had just consumed one burrito deluxe and a chicken fajita. Let’s assume the number is correct.

That means whatever the leadership of Salesforce is doing, that team is winning. AI may be one reason for the sales success if true. On the other hand, I had the small chicken burrito and an iced tea. I said, “Maybe Microsoft is screwing up with AI so much, commercial outfits are turning to Salesforce?”

The answer for many in Silicon Valley is, “Go in.” Forget the Chinese focus on practical applications of smart software. Go in, win big. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

Of course, no one agreed. The conversation turned to the hopelessness of catching flights home and the lack of people in my favorite coupon issuing Mexican themed restaurant in rural Kentucky. I stopped thinking about Salesforce until…

I read “Salesforce Regrets Firing 4000 Experienced Staff and Replacing Them with AI.” The write up is interesting. If the statements in the document are accurate, AI may become a bit of a problem for some outfits in 2026. Be sure to read the original essay by an entity identified as Maarthandam. I am only going to highlight a couple of sentences.

The first passage I noted is:

You cannot put a bot where a human is supposed to be. “We assumed the technology was further along than it actually was.”

Well, that makes sense. High technology folks read science fiction instead of Freddy the Pig books when in middle school. The efforts to build smart software, data centers in space, ray guns, etc. etc. are works in progress. Plus the old admonition of high school teachers, “Never assume, or you will make an “ass” of “u” and “me” seems to have been ignored. Yeah. Wizards.

The second passage of interest to me was:

Executives now concede that removing large numbers of trained support staff created gaps that AI could not immediately fill, forcing teams to reassign remaining employees and increase human oversight of automated systems.

The main idea for me is that humans have to do extra work to keep AI from creating more problems. These are problems unique to a situation. Therefore, something more than today’s AI systems is needed. The “something” is humans who can keep the smart software from wandering into the no man’s land of losing a customer or having a smart self driving car kill the Mission District’s most loved stray cat. Yeah. More humans, expensive ones at that.

The final passage I circled was:

Salesforce has now begun reframing its AI strategy, shifting away from the language of replacement toward what executives call “rebalancing.”

This passage means to this dinobaby, “We screwed up, have paid a consultant to craft some smarmy words, and are trying to contain the damage.” I may be wrong, but the Salesforce situation seems to be a mess. Yeah, leadership Silicon Valley style.

Net net: Is that a blimp labeled “Enron” circling the Salesforce offices?

Stephen E Arnold, December 29, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.