Salesforce CEO's AI investment raises questions over software jobs

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff keeps insisting AI won't gut the software industry's workforce. His chequebook is sending a more complicated signal. The Salesforce founder is a lead backer of June AI, a startup built specifically to automate the work of deploying AI agents inside corporate software systems.

June AI, founded in 2025 by former Salesforce executive Efrat Rapoport alongside Ohad Hen, Barak Goldstein and Idan Tsitiat, helps businesses roll out AI agents across their existing tech stacks.

Benioff has publicly downplayed fears that AI will replace software engineers, telling podcast host Matthew Berman that Salesforce's 15,000-strong engineering team remains "hugely augmented" rather than replaced, because current models still can't operate autonomously.

Critics argue his investment in a company built to shrink the very implementation work engineers do sits awkwardly next to that message.

As opposed to other leaders, Benioff has spoken more openly on how AI has impacted their workforce. In an interview in August 2025, he highlighted the reduction of customer service workers at Salesforce from approximately 9,000 to 5,000 as the company began to use AI bots in service interactions, terming this phase as one of the most exciting in his career.

The shares of Salesforce have fallen by 25.4% year-to-date but have risen by more than 15% within the last month thanks to Agentforce.

According to analysts specialising in workplace technology, the paradox is not as stark as it seems. According to Ahmed Ameen, a spokesperson for ET Group, an IT firm may flourish even if many of its employees become redundant because of the AI that renders its software products easy to set up and maintain.

The analyst with the search experience, Matthew Baden, highlights a larger transition taking place with firms pricing their AI agents as "digital labour" instead of software licences.