Dreamforce 2025 - all the Salesforce news and updates and news we saw at the show

Good morning from San Francisco ahead of our live coverage of Dreamforce 2025!

The event kicks off tomorrow (Tuesday 14) so today we'll be getting prepped and ready, and will try and get some photos of the campground to see what's in store!

Sadly it's a miserable day in San Francisco, lots of wind and rain - so hopefully things will cheer up tomorrow!

We've just been to pick up our badge, but have been told by Salesforce we can't share any pictures of it on here - so you'll just have to imagine it...

The usual "campground" build is taking shape at the Moscone conference center - we'll get some more pictures of it tomorrow morning.

Good morning! After yesterday's apocalytpic rain here in California, we're all set and ready for Dreamforce 2025.

This morning's keynote starts at 10am PT/12pm ET/6pm BST, and we'll try and grab a good spot to hear all the news and announcements from Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff.

For now though...coffee time!

We've made it to the Dreamforce campground - time for some breakfast, then it's off to the keynote.

If you've never been to Dreamforce before, the scale of the event is massive - it takes over most of downton San Francisco.

Our press lounge overlooks the "Dreampark" at the Yerba Buena conference center, to give you some idea of the scale...

We're off to the keynote now, the crowds are already massing, even though we're less than an hour out...

If you're familiar with Salesforce, you'll know they love a mascot - and the full roster is out and in force this morning - Astro, Codey, Appy (no, we haven't made those up) all present and correct.

We're in and seated - it's already busy, with Marc Benioff set to take to the stage in about half an hour...

Next it's time for the traditional Akaka Ohana welcome - another Dreamforce tradition that looks to start the event with a moment of thanks and wellness.

It's nearly showtime - after a few customer interviews to get the crowd warmed up, it's time for a quick look at Slack - but more to come on that later...

Slack CEO Denise Dresser is up next, to talk us through how OpenAI is using Slack.

Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, runs us through how the company was built on Slack, allowing for constant evolution and productivity gains.

"It's the way modern companies work," he notes.

There's a slightly scary robot sitting in the front row opposite us - a taste of things to come?

It's go time - after an introductory video voiced by (who else) Hollywood royalty and Salesforce VIP Matthew McConaghey, marking a year of Agentforce, the lights come up, and Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder and CEO, takes to the stage.

"This is going to the biggest, most exciting Dreamforce ever!" Benioff exclaims as he walks right past us.

Benioff runs us through the key values Salesforce was built on - trust, customer success, innovation, equality and sustainability.

He introduces a video from the late Jane Gooddall, who spoke at Dreamforce last year, espousing the values of sustainability.

Benioff highlights how Salesforce still dedicates 1% equity, 1% of its time, and 1% of its product to good causes, including a new $30 million committed to education and AI literacy.

"We want to connect with our customers in a brand new way...the rate and growth of innovation has been awesome," Benioff notes.

But he notes that when at home on his phone, using amazing AI and LLMs, the difference is so much worse when he gets to the office.

"This ia the next revolution...we've gone through predictive AI, and we're now entering this new agentic AI revolution."

Benioff collars Brad Lightcap from OpenAI again to ask about the company's AI plans, then outlines "the agentic divide".

"If you don't have your data right, your're not going to get your AI right," he notes.

"We're going to this icnredible new world...as the technology elevates us not just as individuals, but also as organizations."

"We have to be there to make it work, that's why humans and agents have to drive customer success together."

"We have to be ground zero...and customer zero," Benioff adds, marking the first year of Agentforce, launched at Dreamforce 2024.

He notes how Salesforce Help is powered by Agentforce, and has already powered 1.8 million conversations.

"We've gone faster with Agentforce than we've gone with any of our other technology."

Context is key, Benioff says, allowing companies to get the most out of their data.

Its new Agentforce 360 platform looks to offer a fully connected way to reach customers, employees, operations and agents in a whole new way.

Here's the classic Salesforce wheel - showing off the sheer amount of platforms the company offers - now all underpinned by Agentforce 360.

"What if everyone had the power to build agentic enteprises?" Benioff says, leaving the stage, as it's time for demos.

First up - Agentforce Vibes, which can build anything with Salesforce "from just a description".

"For the first time now, our people, our AI, our business and our ideas all speak the same language," Patrick Stokes tells us.

After Salesforce Vibes, Benioff is back, noting how AI is elevating every aspect of developer's work, and the enterprise as a whole.

"That is what is really exciting right now," he says, "but AI is not enough - you need all these capabilities to connect it, give it the context, give it the guardrails."

We're now looking at five customer examples to see just how the agentic enterprise looks in practice.

Agentforce Voice and Agentforce Builder are among the new tools getting a big shout-out, along with Agent Script, which allows AI to be deterministic when it needs to be.

Another live demo next - we're looking at how Agentforce Service can help improve customer service tickets, making it a much more pleasant experience for everyone involved.

Next up, it's a deeper look at the Agentic Enterprise with jewellery store Pandora, and how it has been using Agentforce Commerce to give customers a personal shopping agent to give more of a personal touch.

Next, it's a look at Pepsico - which needs no introduction - and how it is using Agentforce Sales and Agentforce Field Service to improve marketing, sales and field services.

Next, we hear from FedEx, and how it is using Data 360 - the next generation of Data Cloud, and Agentforce IT Service - and how it is replacing tickets with instant, AI-powered support.

Finally, its time to hear from Dell Technologies, and how it is using Agentforce Supply Chain to speed up deliveries and logistics with AI.

Company founder and CEO Michael Dell is here, and Benioff pulls him up to ask about the future of agentic AI in businesses.

Dell names understanding a company's processes as a key consideration - find out what really matters, and start with the big projects.

Benioff also asks Dell about his inspiration on pushing AI forward, and what he sees for the future of his company.

Dell says AI can help unleash the power of "dark data" that went unnoticed before, so this is a great time to look at the trajectory of change in the industry - moving from calculating and computing, to thinking and machines that are thinking for us.

All companies will have to rethink and reimagine their ways of doing business to stay relevant, Dell says.

Customer stories done - we now turn to look at exactly how you build an agentic enteprise.

The Agentforce Ecosystem numbers a frankly ridiculous amount of companies, so customers should find plenty to work with, Benioff notes.

And that's a wrap! Benioff thanks us all for coming and sends us out into the conference - but we'll be back shortly, with more from Mr Benioff too - so stay tuned for that.

We're back in the press lounge now, but about to be joined by a few special guests - Marc Benioff will be here shortly for a Q&A session alongside a few customers.

Benioff is joined by all of the customers from the keynotes - so it should be an interesting discussion...

"The rate of technology innovation far exceeds the rate of technology adoption," Benioff notes.

After a brief intro, it's into the questions - first up, how do you help customers keep up with this pace of innovation?

Benioff says it's about constant communication with customers to find out their needs, as well as feedback from both humans and agents - something the company didn't even really have this time next year.

"A year ago Agentforce was a product - now, it's a platform," he notes.

"It's beyond our expectation - we are all listening to customers more deeply," he adds.

Next up, Benioff is asked about a...troublesome interview he recently gave, and what he thinks about Trump's recent crackdown on visas, and the need for extra protection in San Francisco.

Benioff says he hopes we're all having a happy and safe time at Dreamforce, and notes the company has brought in outside police to keep things secure.

"That is the number one thing that's on my mind - safety."

Next up, a question about customers not feeling like they are ready for AI - how does Benioff sell it to them?

"This is the moment we are in for technology," Benioff notes, "this is the moment where the technology is outstripping customer adoption...and we want to show them customers who are front-runners in this - their stories are so critical and compelling, that's what we have to profile."

A question about the "agentic enterprise" next - how does Salesforce help push this?

Benioff calls on Pepsico to talk about its experience using the Salesforce ecosystem, noting it wants to be the orchestrator, using a prime partner like Salesforce.

Another Agentforce adoption question - Benioff is asked if the numbers we heard earlier are strictly correct, and he hits back with what he says is the latest figures, claiming impressive, fast growth.

"I've never seen anything grow faster - which means we've had to go faster," he says.

Another tick for the Dreamforce bingo card - a little dig at Oracle, and Benioff's great rival Larry Ellison, as Benioff notes the two companies have clashing conferences this week.

A financials question next - when will Salesforce hit $50bn revenues (Benioff told us it hit $41.3bn this year)?

More details on this will be coming soon, Benioff says.

Next a question about partnerships - particularly OpenAI, what's the situation there?

With a laugh, Benioff answers that OpenAI is "an incredible company" and he and Sam Altman have known each other a long time.

"For a lot of customers, they're working with us to consume that technology - but they don't have the means to deploy it," he says, noting that Salesforce can help bring OpenAI to others.

Benioff bids us farewell, as he's running late to film a segment for Good Morning America, and with that, it's time for lunch here.

Next up, we're in and seated at the Slack keynote, to hear everything new from the online collaboration platform.

Slack announced a host of new additions and services earlier this week, so we'll likely get an update on those - let's see...

Our host today - Slack CEO Denise Dresser - welcomes us in, promising a keynote full of innovation and breakthrough customers.

She says the aim with Slack is "breaking boundaries" in how we all work, with AI bringing in unlimited potential for human workers.

"I've never experienced anything like this," she says, "This takes a completely different mindset, this is about fundamentally reimangining from the ground up"

"Slack is already an agentic operating system - think about it, it's where your people work," Dresser emphasises.

"This is not a big grandiose vision I'm unveiling - this is a reality," she says.

"This is not just about getting work done...this is about a full reimagine," she says, harking back to this morning's keynote.

First customer story of the day - General Motors VP and CISO Mike Hanley is up on stage to talk about its innovation story.

He notes that the company wants a "completely different way of working" that allows for maximized productivity and efficiency - and now boasts 96,000 users on Slack, sending 2 million messages on the average work day.

Dresser moves on to talk about Slack's new features and additions, and to kick this off, introduces Parker Harris, Salesforce Co-founder and Slack CTO to the stage.

Harris notes that every Salesforce cloud is going to be in Slack, with Agentforce set to play a central role going forward.

After a demo of some of Agentforce working in Slack, Harris moves on to Slack's own AI features, and introduces Peter Doolan, EVP & Chief Customer Officer, Slack, on stage.

"We want to make things as simple and pleasant and productive as possible," Doolan notes, outlining its aim to "give every employee AI superpowers".

Slack's aim is to keep users in the platform at all times - bringing in information from platforms such as Google Drive, Asana and even Microsoft Teams in one place.

Slackbot was probably the most striking of all Slack's new launches, linking in to all of your conversations, files and workflows to get you the information you need.

Doolan, playing a manager at Slack customer Anthropic, shows us a demo showcases what Slackbot can do, right from the very start of your working day, with the tool getting to grips with complex work issues and questions.

"Here's how be bring the power of AI forward," Doolan notes, showing how even complex, multi-layered questions can be tackled by Slackbot.

After this, Doolan calls up Rob Seamon, chief product officer for Slack, to look at how Slack can help unify your entire enterprise into one agentic OS.

"We want to be the home for all agents, and we think Slack is the best home for all agents," he notes.

Seaman notes all agents should be able to work in Slack as someone you can DM and add to channels, bringing a whole new horizon to your data work.

After a demo with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Seaman throws it back to Denise Dresser to wrap things up.

"Hopefully you can see you have the power with Slack and Saleasforce to truly build an agentic OS system," she says.

"We are reimagining the future of work together - the future is right now."

And with that, it's a wrap! We're off to get some fresh air and recharge, but will be back shortly.

Good morning from day two at Dreamforce 2025!

We're off to the conference shortly for another busy day, but as a reminder, here's what we saw yesterday...

- "This is the next revolution” - Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff hails the arrival of the 'agentic enterprise'

- Salesforce Agentforce 360 looks to take your company data to the next level

Sadly it's another grey and drizzly day in San Francisco - the perfect weather to be indoors for some tech keynotes, perhaps?

First up - a press Q&A with Slack CEO Denise Dresser, along with Salesforce chief people officer Natalie Scardino.

So, what can AI agents actually do in the workforce?

Scardino notes that low-skilled tasks in sales and services are easy meat for AI agents, allowing human workers to be more productive.

Dresser adds that coding is another key area, allowing engineers and developers to focus on the tasks that really matter without getting distracted by admin or paperwork.

Moving from simply suggesting, agents are all about taking action now, she says.

The new currency for scale and growth is going to be intelligence, Dresser notes - as agents will be able to unlock new levels of potential.

It will also change the way we have to work - AI is a growth imperative, and every CEO should be thinking about how they are going to transform their business.

There's a new vector of growth - one that will reimagine everything, she notes.

"It's bigger than anything we've ever experienced," Dresser notes.

Scardino adds that using AI is no longer a question - "every job is being redesigned," she says.

What's new at Slack? Dresser runs us through a selection of the key announcements this week, and how Slack looked to bring in a new way of intuitive working.

Now, customers have said they want an agentic working platform, she notes, avoiding siloed chaos, as unlocking new capabilities in the age of AI needs such a one-stop shop.

"People want to work in a conversational way," she notes.

Moving to talk about people and HR - how will agents affect these incredibly personal areas?

Scardino notes that new entrants at Salesforce often ask what tools are available before joining the company - and says there are a whole host of new jobs right now which simply didn't exist six months ago.

"Our empolyees don't want to know a thousand agents - they just want one," she says.

What does an entry-level job look like at Salesforce and Slack given its AI focus?

Scardino says new grads are being hired at scale, with 1,000 interns also welcomed over summer 2025. The level of awareness and AI digital skills is on the rise, which is encouraging, she says.

What can agents do better? Dresser says she's very empathetic with them, but says she is looking forward to having a digital human twin soon - having a personal digital assistant with her at all times.

Robotics is also another key growth she says - particularly helping those with disabilities.

That's a wrap here - time for a quick break, but we'll be back soon!

Our final event of the day is a big one - Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff in conversation with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

We're in and seated now - starting soon.

After the usual McConaghey-fronted video about the benefits of AI, Marc Benioff welcomes Dario Amodei to the stage.

Amodei starts with a recap of his career story and upbringing, after spells at Google and OpenAI, before founding Anthropic in 2021.

"The rest is history," he says.

Amodei notes Salesforce is a small investor in Anthropic, with Benioff replying that he's thrilled to be part of the journey.

Anthropic also took over the old Slack building, following Salesforce's acquisition - meaning it's on the Salesforce park estate.

Benioff asks what Amodei's biggest surprise since leaving OpenAI and starting Anthropic with his seven co-founders.

"There's been so many moments," Amodei says, outlining the dichotomy of past predictions of data surges, alongside rising revenues.

"A lot of the things I'm seeing happening, I just never would have expected," he says. "When you start a company, you really see...differentiation - OpenAI has gone in the consumer direction, we've gone in the enterprise direction...it's sort of a natural experiment, both exist in the ecosystem, but the approach they take is different."

Amodei says the jump to being able to truly agentic abilities in quite surprising - the ability to do tasks end to end in a way that was not possible before.

He references coding in particular, but also mentions financial services and health and medical also as possible great use cases for agents.

"The coders are vaulable, they're early adopters - they have kind of given us a glimspe of the future," he says.

Benioff switches to talk about AGI - how far along are we?

Amodei says "the sci-fi sheen" on AGI can be distracting - but there are some things that are real, including the ability to make models that are incrementally smarter - and will soon be smarter than humans.

Claude is being used to build products on top of Claude and to help the next Claude, he notes - and 90% of all code at Anthropic is being written by AI (although a human is still needed to review it).

Benioff asks if this means Anthropic needs less engineers - but Amodei says there still need to be humans in the loop.

If Claude is writing 90% more code - you might need more software developers to focus on the other 10%, he notes - what Benioff says is a "rebalancing" of the work.

It's hard to say when the true tipping point will come, Amodei says, and under pressing from Benioff, says there will be a lot of disruption - "a true labor disruption", within the next two to five years.

"I am concerned, particularly about people's ability to adapt as the jobs are changing so fast."

Think of the models as a second opinion, Amodei says - you don't trust it alone, as it's not always right.

He describes how his sister (and Anthropic co-founder) suffered an immune system infection while pregnant recently, and used Claude to find out extra possibilites on what the cause could be.

It's hard to say what will happen 6 months from now, Amodei notes, especially given how often new models are released.

It's too early to say what the winners will be, he adds, especially in the whole new ecosystems being created by these models.

Where will Anthropic be in 5 years in a dream world, Benioff asks?

Amodei notes there are a lot of concerns with AI - but he is an "incredible believer" in the updsides of AI.

He names the potential to cure diseases, including cancer - "I just think AI is the right thing to cure them."

He adds that financial services and insurance could also benefit - but says "every enterprise" can benefit in some way.

"My vision of Anthropic is a company which serves the world, puts AI at the center of every enterprise," he says.

Alongside financial success, Amodei says Anthropic wants to be known as the company that is reliable and trustworthy.

"Being good stewards is vital," he says.

Benioff asks about building data centers and chips, and the energy they use - how serious an issue will this be? And what will the next generation look like?

Amodei says he knows there will be a huge need for compute - and Anthropic is trying to secure that power wherever they can.

Anthropic is growing faster than any other company in this space, he says - and so if the demand is there, it will benefit everyone.

And that's a wrap - thanks for joining us today, we'll be back tomorrow for the final day of Dreamforce 2025!

Hello from our final day of Dreamforce 2025! The show may be nearly over, but there's still one big special guest to come - more on that shortly.

But now - coffee (Peet's, as any good San Franciscan knows, of course...)

The final session is a big one - Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff will be on stage talking to Sundar Pichai, Google & Alphabet CEO.

It should be a fascinating session, kicking off shortly.

After the usual McConaghey-fronted video, Marc Benioff is here, and introduces Sundar Pichai to the stage.

Benioff starts by inviting Pichai to delve into his upbringing a little, starting with his childhood in South India.

Pichai outlines how his family had to wait years for even basic technology - waiting five years for a rotary phone, which became a local attraction - showing how technology can help build a community.

Giving access to technology can transform local communities - with Pichai noting Google recently invested $15bn in India.

Benioff asks Pichai about how he came to decide technology would be his passion - Pichai said he was always obsessed with Silicon Valley, and was inspired by MIT's One Laptop per Child program, which gives hardware to children across the world - and that this influenced his work in launching Chromebooks decades later.

"AI is the ultimate expression" of giving technology access to everyone in the world - it's a great equalizer, Pichai says.

Pichai remembers how when at Stamford, the sheer range of opportunities available was particularly surprising - but meeting people with the same passions was especially unique - with a desire to make the world better.

Asked when he first heard about Google - Pichai says he was an early user, impressed with the ease of use, and an instant way to give people access to technology.

Starting at Google, he switched from working from semiconductors, to working on the Chrome browser, which he says brought him closer to where technology was impacting people.

The age of Web 2.0, when the internet started to evolve into a content platform, was an exciting time, Pichai says.

Benioff recalls his first meeting with Google, which resulted in the latter forming its charity arm.

Pichai recalls former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warning him off building a browser, but that once it was created, he became its biggest champion.

Benioff asks Pichai what his feelings on his career arc has been.

"Technolgoy is one of the biggest enablers we know...if anything, that journey is accelerating," Pichai says, "our job is to be good stewards of this technology, bring it in a way that really benefits society."

"I think there is no better technology to do that then AI," Pichai adds, noting that he wanted to start Google's shift towards AI back in 2017.

"It's been a journey," he laughs, "it was obvious to be this was going to be the decade of AI."

Benioff harks back to three years ago, when Google was really leading the AI landscape - until ChatGPT arrived on the scene.

What was Pichai's reaction to OpenAI?

"We saw the potential right away," he says, likening it to how YouTube came out of nowhere in 2006, and Instagram surprised Facebook and other platforms.

"I realised this was the biggest opportunity in technology, we were incredibly well-positioned - we had to carpe diem," he adds.

Pichai says the progress has been "extraordinary", and mentions Gemini 3.0, launching soon.

Time to look to the future - Benioff says he's never seen Google go faster - maybe it's good to have competition.

When it comes to future innovation, what does Pichai see as the next step forward? Benioff says there's no-one like Google, surely, on looking to the future.

How do things look in 2035 at Google?

Pichai says you have to be humble when looking at the future - and mentions Waymo's self-driving cars as a good example of something that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable.

He says quantum will undoubtedly be here within the next ten years, and affect everything from cryptocurrency to photography.

"We are definitely to have digital super-intelligence for all of us, that is going to be a reality," Pichai says.

"We are so good at adapting," Pichai adds, again noting the success of Waymo vehicles becoming part of San Francisco life.

"We are such a resiliently adaptive species."

"The technology is going to progress, we should embrace and innovative with it, the benefits are going to be profound," Pichai says.

The power of AI could even mean Google Glass could return soon, Pichai says in reply to a question about direct human/AI interfaces.

Wrapping up, Pichai praises the Salesforce relationship, and its customer focus - and hails the opportunity of the agentic enterprise.

Looking forward, he adds that 2026 will be another great year of progress, bringing smarter and more intuitive agents.

"As enterprises, you want this to work well together," he says, "that is the real opportunity we have."

And that's a wrap - a fascinating chat, and good to hear about the backstory of Pichai. We're off to round up the last bits of Dreamforce 2025, so stay tuned!