Mark Benioff: “AI Secures Sales Resources by Taking Over Repetitive Tasks”
Salesforce has recently joined the wave of massive layoffs sweeping through the U.S. tech industry. According to IT industry sources and foreign media reports on September 4, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff stated in a recent appearance on the podcast “The Logan Bartlett Show” that approximately 4,000 people were laid off from the customer service support division.
Benioff explained, “AI handles half of customer service interactions, so we don’t need as many people as before,” adding that they reduced their workforce from 9,000 to around 5,000. He continued, “With AI taking over repetitive tasks, we’ve secured resources for sales activities,” and noted, “The past 8 months have been the most exciting months of my career.”
In an interview with Bloomberg TV this June, Benioff also mentioned, “AI currently performs 30-50% of Salesforce’s overall tasks,” emphasizing that “the process of AI replacing jobs that people used to do is inevitable. Instead, employees will focus on higher value-added tasks.”
As of January this year, Salesforce had 76,453 employees globally.
Amid the trend of “AI transformation efficiency” led by major U.S. big tech firms like Microsoft, Google, and Meta, core researchers are receiving billions of dollars in investment, while the remaining workforce is being automated with AI agents.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted, “In the next 1-5 years, up to half of all white-collar jobs, including entry-level office jobs, could be at risk,” and warned of a potential unemployment rate surge to 20%.
**Explanation of Terms**
**Salesforce**: Salesforce is a global cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, USA. It offers a variety of cloud computing services focusing on enterprise customer relationship management (CRM). It competes with companies like Oracle and Microsoft in the CRM field and maintains the number one market share.