Marc Benioff says AI coding agents kept Salesforce engineering flat
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff just shared that the company has "almost not hired engineers" in two years, thanks to AI coding agents from Anthropic, OpenAI Codex, and Cursor.
With these AI agents making software development faster and easier, Salesforce's engineering team has stayed steady at around 15,000 people since 2024.
Salesforce plans $300 million Anthropic token investment
Instead of focusing on hiring more engineers, Salesforce is now growing its sales team because it still sees real value in human connections for selling.
The company also replaced 4,000 support roles with AI agents last year and plans to invest $300 million in Anthropic tokens in 2026.
Benioff reassures that engineers are still needed to keep an eye on the AI, "The model still cannot operate autonomously. We're not at that level yet."