What’s another day without Silicon Valley tycoons talking smack about each other? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff ensures the passage of time as he engages in one of his most frequent activities—taking a jab at Microsoft’s AI product.
Benioff claimed that we’d be better off not listening to the noise about AI, at least from anyone besides him. “Microsoft has really disappointed so many of our customers,” Benioff said to Business Insider. “They’ve really done it by delivering a level of hype around their AI solutions.”
Of course, Benioff has some billions in the game of piercing doubt into the effectiveness of Microsoft’s AI copilot.
Just one day before the interview, Microsoft announced 10 new AI agents for its product Dynamics 365—said innovation stands in direct competition with Salesforce soon to be released AI agent Agentforce, which is set to be generally available on Friday.
“Microsoft has been having a hard time really responding with customers who have had any level of success with their AI solutions,” he added when speaking to Business Insider.
His jab at at Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella comes hot off the heels of scathing comments he made just two weeks ago on the podcast Rapid Response, Benioff said that “Microsoft has done a tremendous disservice to not only our whole industry but all of the AI research that has been done.”
He added that Microsoft customers were “told things about enterprise AI, maybe AI overall, that are not true.” Benioff previously compared Microsoft’s Copilot to the outmoded paperclip tool, Clippy.
Microsoft referred Fortune to customer data in response, noting that nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies use Copilot. Indeed, if customers are all that disappointed it’s not too clear from Microsoft’s growing base. Copilot customers increased more than 60% quarter-over-quarter with the number who use the product daily in their jobs nearly doubling in the same period, according to Microsoft’s latest customer momentum and use case data as shared.
Benioff touts his own AI. But acknowledges there’s a way to go
In Benioff’s eyes, AI has enormous potential, it’s just being misadvertised. “I’ve never been more excited about anything at Salesforce, maybe in my career,” he said on Rapid Response, adding that he thinks AI will change companies, Salesforce, and software forever.
AI assistants, in general, have not been exactly the world-changers that they were promised. Many products or chatbot systems that use AI are plagued by hallucinations and bugs. It all feels a bit like a tech version of the emperor’s new clothes—as CEOs point fingers and place the marker for unpromised innovation later down the line.
Benioff recently tweeted that “AI isn’t yet curing cancer or solving climate change as pundits claim, but our current AI tech does have immense power to drive meaningful improvements in many areas over our life as a ‘co-intelligence.’”
The name of the game instead is about “managing expectations.” It’s certainly a less exciting sell, especially if AI is to still be upheld as the latest breakthrough technology. But it might be an increasingly popular message.
Saying that Copilot “spews data all over the floor,” Benioff added on said podcast. He hasn’t “found a customer who has had transformational work” with the tool. It leads to confusion to those who bought into said narrative, he claimed. Instead, Salesfore encourages people to “get their hands in the soil because they need to see for themselves exactly what is possible, what is real, and how easy it is to get huge value from AI.” Encouraging clients to get involved in mess is certainly an interesting strategy, but definitely not an overselling one.
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