Overview Salesforce has expanded beyond its CRM capabilities — a necessary move based on its belief that every organization will eventually become agent-first. Its investments in Data Cloud, zero-copy partnerships and the pending Informatica acquisition provide opportunities for Salesforce to further expand beyond the CRM domain. These investments are also foundational for customers wanting to build out more complex Agentforce AI solutions that use a variety of contextual data (structured and unstructured). Salesforce is quickly rolling out AI features across Agentforce and its Customer 360 applications, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Agentforce 3 launched in June 2025, less than a year after the original version in September 2024. Through an expanded partnership with Google, Salesforce customers can access Google Gemini models. In 2026, this partnership will include support for running Salesforce on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition, Salesforce will expand its AgentExchange to include Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers from over 30 partners. Agentforce will connect to these listed servers or to any other MCP-compliant server through a native, secure MCP client. Salesforce has made or announced multiple strategic acquisitions to strengthen its talent and capabilities. These acquisitions target the following areas: AI Data management Data backup Knowledge management Retail Noteworthy Events, Key Initiatives and Activities Agentforce 3 Agentforce 3 launched in June 2025 with several enhancements. Notable enhancements include a command center and planned support for MCP and application-to-application (A2A) communication. At present, Salesforce customers using MuleSoft or Heroku can create, host and manage MCP servers directly through those platforms. Support for turning MuleSoft APIs into MCP servers is now generally available, and A2A support is currently in beta with general availability planned for October. Additionally, Salesforce has established MCP partnerships with many vendors, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Box, Google and IBM. Agentforce 1 Editions Salesforce announced Agentforce 1 Editions in May 2025. Agentforce 1 is a bundle of products that includes: Everything in the relevant Unlimited Edition The Agentforce add-on Large allowances of Flex and Data Services Credits Unlimited Flex Credits for employee use Enterprise and Unlimited customers who do not want to upgrade to Agentforce 1 can purchase Agentforce for Sales, Service, Industry and other additional products a la carte. Flex Credits and Flex Agreements Launched in May 2025, Flex Credits are an alternative metric for Agentforce consumption that starts to align cost with value. These credits are consumed only when an Agent Action is completed. Other consumption-based products, such as Data Cloud, are expected to transition to Flex Credits in the future. Announced at the same time as Flex Credits, Flex Agreements allow customers to swap user-based licenses for Flex Credits. This flexible model marks the start of a transformational change to Salesforce pricing. Strategic Acquisitions to Expand Data and AI Capabilities Salesforce increased the pace of acquisitions significantly in the past 12 months, revealing its urge to increase talent, as well as data and AI capabilities. Acquisitions include: Bluebirds (AI-powered sales tech) Convergence.ai (AI agent) Informatica (data management; expected to close in the first quarter of 2026) Moonhub (talent) Own (data backup/protection) PredictSpring (retail) Regrello (AI-powered process automation; expected to close late 2025) Tenyx (AI voice agent) Waii (Text-to-SQL AI assistant) Zoomin (AI-powered knowledge management) These range from small startup talent acquisitions to multibillion dollar deals. The Infomatica acquisition is the largest acquisition Salesforce has made since Slack in 2021. Top Strengths and Challenges Top Strengths AI Advancements Salesforce continues to deliver rapid AI advancements, helping it stay competitive in the AI space. Notable examples include the launch of Agentforce 3 and Agentforce DX, support for MCP and A2A, new MCP server development and hosting capabilities, and over 200 prebuilt industry actions. A new command center, part of Agentforce 3, aims to provide better observability, including live health monitoring, for managing and improving AI solutions. Cloud Infrastructure Flexibility In 2026, Salesforce will offer two cloud infrastructure options for hosting its applications: Google Cloud and AWS. This flexibility lets customers align their Salesforce deployment with the cloud infrastructure they use for other workloads, and potentially host them in the same region. CRM and Integration Salesforce has maintained the largest market share in several markets, including CRM customer service, CRM sales, CRM marketing and cross-CRM, and iPaaS. This strong market presence shows Salesforce’s ability to retain customers, grow its customer base and increase adoption from existing customers. Cross-CRM and iPaaS indicate that customers are using multiple Salesforce products, reflecting CIOs’ interest in consolidating platforms for enterprise service management. Top Challenges Packaging Salesforce’s complex packaging is hard for customers to understand. Customers must invoke many manual actions and tools to establish a reliable estimate and forecast of license cost and credit consumption. Product Strategy Salesforce has been slow in completing the replatforming of some products to its metadata platform and has been positioning Data Cloud in nearly all proposals. These actions expose Salesforce to market share loss, as indicated by shifts in many markets, including CPQ, Revenue Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud. Forecasting and Monitoring Data Cloud Consumption Customers have reported that, before committing to Data Cloud, they struggled to calculate the number of credits they needed to buy. Postcontract, some customers have reported quickly consuming their credit allocation, resulting in budget overruns. This scenario has been most common among customers who are experienced with seat-based licensing but are new to consumption-based pricing. Trending Topics Gartner has conducted an analysis of recent inquiry calls regarding Salesforce. This analysis has revealed key areas of interest and concern among clients. Below are the top questions that clients have been asking, reflecting their priorities and the information they seek about Salesforces’ services and capabilities, along with an analysis of why the questions are trending. How advanced is Agentforce, and what are its real capabilities versus the marketing hype? CIOs are evaluating Agentforce’s readiness for full-scale deployment, citing concerns around output reliability and feature limitations. While these issues are not unique to Agentforce, they increase pressure on Salesforce to demonstrate that its AI, particularly agentic, capabilities can scale and deliver consistent results. The increase in acquisitions focused on AI and data is one indication of Salesforce looking to address issues and pressure quickly. What are the practical use cases for Agentforce, particularly for frontline sellers, sales enablement and call center operations? CIOs are interested in how Agentforce can enhance productivity, service delivery quality and customer experience. The three use cases that appear most frequently in these areas are: Seller assistance Training and coaching of sales and customer service staff Customer service case automation What are the best practices for negotiating Salesforce renewals, especially regarding early renewals, price caps, swap rights and tiered pricing? Organizations often have questions about cost transparency, increasing prices, managing multiple order forms and aligning renewal dates. Salesforce pricing and packaging have become more complex, with a myriad of products, editions, metrics and expensive add-ons, such as Shield. Customers report that Salesforce can be difficult to negotiate with, particularly at renewal time. What are the capabilities and maturity of Salesforce Data Cloud, and how can we effectively integrate it with existing (non-Salesforce) solutions? Data Cloud can add significant value for customers deeply invested in the Salesforce ecosystem. However, implementations are often complex and require partner support. For organizations with more diversified technology portfolios, their questions shift to: Understanding the right time, if at all, to adopt Data Cloud Evaluating how effectively Data Cloud integrates with or replaces non-Salesforce solutions, such as data management and AI solutions How can we rationalize and optimize our Salesforce investments to achieve better business outcomes? Many organizations have signed multiyear, multiproduct contracts with Salesforce to achieve higher discounts. These contracts often have the aspirational goal of fully leveraging Salesforce products and capabilities and using all the licenses. In reality, organizations may not adopt software as quickly as forecast for various reasons. This underutilization prompts CIOs to find ways to optimize their use of Salesforce products or reduce their spending.