Marc Benioff Strikes Back at Satya: “AGI is Not Here”

In this episode, Marc Benioff (CEO, Salesforce) responds to Satya Nadella’s recent predictions and shares his thoughts on the current reality of Agi. He dives into the rise of digital labor, the multi-trillion-dollar potential of agentic technology, and what the future split between software and agentic revenue might look like. Marc also discusses why CEOs need to stay grounded in delivering actionable solutions, and he emphasizes the moral obligation businesses have to retrain employees and invest in communities as AI continues to evolve.
(00:00) Intro
(01:45) Salesforce's AI Impact on Business
(03:03) The Future of Digital Labor
(05:28) Agentic AI and Customer Success
(07:42) Salesforce's Competitive Edge
(11:48) Marc Benioff's Response to Satya Nadella
(14:16) The Role of AI in Enterprise Software
(20:14) The Balance of AI and Human Labor
(28:34) Salesforce's Philanthropic Efforts
(36:24) The Future of AI and Regulation
(40:24) Conclusion and Farewell
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: / @redpointai
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

[@ScottPollack-o7e]

Steve Ballmer vibe when Iphone came out.

[@GigaFro]

Love that even at his scale. He is still selling his product. Gotta appreciate the grind. Also, like how grounded he is with AI. AI good, but not great. Yet, good is good enough to provide a lot of value.

[@kohlkohlbrenner3349]

Salesforce works today because the workforce isn't technical enough and/or can't effectively and efficiently manage the data they use and the connections between that data. That will all change with agents.

[@FelixSphere-AI]

Marc’s point about the moral obligation to retrain employees really hits home.

[@Mandelasmind]

What do tech companies even do? In every other industry retaining people is part of winning a market

[@swinginsteel8519]

9:14 CEO selling his existing software bolting on agents and calling it “agent first”. 😂 CEOs like Satya and Marc like to use the word “agent” a lot but it really means just making delegating flow control conditionals to an LLM’s judgement. Marc is coping with the inevitability that his CRUD apps like CRM will have no growth now that IT departments can code again on a solved problem for a basic CRUD app tailored specifically to their business that has the features that create all the real value. Enterprise SaaS vendors and IT compliance has gotten so burdensome that you might as well insource the work versus staying vendor captive.

[@ryanderivera7802]

Microsoft is commissioning a nuclear power plant to power its future AI data centres and is also developing its own in-house chip. Salesforce is likely to struggle in the long run due to pricing wars.

[@bhavikpatel576]

Haha I don’t know anyone that loves Salesforce

[@heykike]

I do. A Boomer Executive at work that never used SF 😂

[@samikankaanpaa546]

IRL Agentforce is in beta, customers with six-figure seats are changing from Salesforce to Microsoft. At the end of the day, Salesforce is just a CRM and that is their biggest problem.

[@miraculixxs]

Yeah a CRM is really a list of customer addresses and a list of notes and to-dos attached. Not to belittle that, it's useful but it's not exactly magic

[@odiseezall]

most down to earth interview about current AI with Marc Benioff I've seen

[@WFCA]

I ❤ Marc. He started integrating AI into Salesforce with Einstein back with RelateIQ.

[@miraculixxs]

Isn't that the guy who called everybody RTO except himself bc he "just cannot work in an office"? Credibility is such a virtue

[@UB-qc8yk]

Nadella's comments have been taken completely out of context, Nadella was talking about the future and Benioff is talking about the present. Once Agents are ubiquitous, multimodal and more accurate, the logic layer of business Apps as we know today, hence the back end will be completely different, that is what Nadella was saying. Anyone who has tried to build agents will tell you that building the logic layer with A.I. is a completely different ball game than building a conventional logic layer for a conventional App.

[@keanonabil2494]

Wow..he did not answer about reskilling his own workforce..WOWWW

[@miraculixxs]

85% accrurate means 15'000 issues for every 100'000 transactions.

[@ahmedadly]

Hey Logan, this episode on Spotify has no sound

[@loganbartlett7904]

Thank you checking...

[@helloworld7313]

Salesforce CEO Marc always gives this arrogant vibe(last seen in allin summit), always selling salesforce rather than offering real insights.

[@Ryan-tf7bs]

Logan hasn’t seen A Space Odyssey

[@JoshtheFifith]

the problem that I see with these hotshot CEOs is that they are all talking there own wallet rather than speaking about the future

[@kohlkohlbrenner3349]

"I use Zoom" - Owner of Slack

[@johnfitzpatrick8310]

Some sticks in the mud, like Marc Benioff, insist on working in the real world. Such a dearth of vision ...

[@the1youknew]

"Took OpenAI and dropped it into Excel" - rehearsed and used as-is multiple times. This isn't good criticism, this is dishonest smear campaign.

[@kohlkohlbrenner3349]

Salesforce is a meme ... he runs a company that people ask "what does Salesforce do" ... people HATE Slack. They don't innovate. Not the same for Microsoft. Satya is right about the impending collapse.

[@NeflixNChill]

lol people who ask “what does salesforce do” just don’t know software it’s not a profound point.

[@marcodiluca9928]

I really don't understand Satya Nadella. He is damaging his reputation. Copilot and its ecosystem are some of the worst products ever.

[@BizAutomation4U]

OMG, Mark B continues to be such a blow-hard but his instincts are right on target. He's interesting in a way L Ellison never was who was even more arrogant, but not the same visionary Mark is. While I'm not a fan of Mark B, he has his finger on the pulse of our industry, which tells me he loves what he does, not looking to phone it in.

[@trialleadgen334]

Marc is out. Sales force is gone. He needs to sell sales force at Pennies to current dollars

[@SpencerHubert-k2l]

First