Salesforce (CRM) Stock Drops 25% — But Its AI Numbers Tell a Different Story

TLDR

• Salesforce’s Agentforce AI platform hit $800M in annual recurring revenue, up 82% in six months
• Full-year FY26 revenue rose 10% to $41.5B; Q4 revenue up 12% to $11.2B
• Combined ARR for Agentforce and Data Cloud hit $2.9B, growing over 200%
• Management raised its FY2030 revenue target to $63B and expanded a $50B buyback
• CRM stock is down 25% this year despite strong AI growth numbers

Salesforce’s AI revenue is growing fast, and the numbers are hard to ignore. Agentforce, its agent platform, went from $440M in annual recurring revenue last July to $800M by the end of the fourth quarter — an 82% jump in roughly six months.

Salesforce, Inc., CRM

That said, $800M is still a small slice of Salesforce’s overall business. Total FY26 revenue came in at $41.5 billion, up 10% year-over-year. Q4 alone brought in $11.2 billion, a 12% rise.

Remaining performance obligations — a key forward-looking metric — climbed to $72 billion. That points to a healthy pipeline heading into FY27.

When you combine Agentforce with Data Cloud (now called Data 360), ARR reached $2.9 billion, growing over 200%. That’s driving some of the largest enterprise deals the company has ever closed.

Management guided FY27 revenue growth at 10%-11%, and pushed the long-term FY2030 target up to $63 billion. That’s a meaningful lift from prior guidance.

Buybacks and Margin Story

On the capital return side, Salesforce expanded its buyback program to $50 billion and raised its dividend. The company returned 99% of FY26 free cash flow to shareholders — a number that tends to get Wall Street’s attention.

Margins are edging higher, though some investors are watching legacy segments like Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Tableau, which have shown softness. There’s also some caution around the company’s plan to change how it reports cloud-level data going forward.

Still, analysts largely see the AI upsell as an opportunity rather than a threat. Salesforce has deep customer relationships, embedded workflows, and large amounts of proprietary business data — things that are hard for AI startups to replicate overnight.

The broader concern hitting software stocks this year has been a narrative around AI disruption — the idea that agents could replace traditional seat-based software. Anthropic’s head of Americas acknowledged last month that “2025 was meant to be the year where AI agents transformed the enterprise. But the hype turned out to be mostly premature.”

OpenAI has made similar admissions, noting that enterprise AI deployments require IT consultants and experience they don’t yet have.

That’s been a tailwind for established software players like Salesforce, which already have the enterprise relationships in place.

AI Adoption Still Climbing Slowly

U.S. Census data shows that only 18% of businesses were using AI as of early 2026, though that rises to 32% for companies with 250 or more employees. The numbers have been ticking up since 2023.

Salesforce also recently extended its Formula 1 partnership through 2030, launching an Agentforce-powered Fan Companion on F1.com. The rollout is designed to explain the sweeping 2026 rule changes to fans. CRM stock rose about 3% on the day of that announcement.

Wall Street currently holds a Moderate Buy rating on CRM, with analysts pointing to roughly 35%-40% upside over the next year. The stock is trading near one of its lowest historical forward multiples.

CRM is down 25% year-to-date.

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