SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After riding the artificial intelligence craze to new heights, business software maker Salesforce has been pummeled by a wave of investor skepticism that’s intensified the pressure on its persuasive CEO Marc Benioff to reverse the tide.
Benioff, who helped spearhead the transition to cloud computing after founding Salesforce in 1999, got a chance to try to change the AI narrative late Wednesday with the release of his company’s latest quarterly results.
The key numbers covering August through October eclipsed the analyst projections that help steer the stock market, providing Benioff with some material to support his contention that Salesforce’s big bets on AI will yield a jackpot. The San Francisco-based company earned $2.1 billion, or $2.19 per share, a 37% increase from the same time last year while revenue rose 9% to nearly $10.9 billion. Salesforce also provided an outlook for the current quarter ending in January that exceeded analysts' predictions.
“We’re uniquely positioned for this new era,” Benioff boasted during a 25-minute address on an analyst conference call that sometimes sounded like an AI sermon that also featured comments about “wow” moments that customers experience when seeing the company's technology.
Salesforce’s shares initially surged by more than 5% after the results came out, but backtracked to a gain of 2% following Benioff's presentation.
It's unclear if that modest momentum will be sustained in Thursday's regular trading session because making more money than analysts anticipated isn’t necessarily enough to keep propelling a technology stock amid persisting doubts about whether the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into the much-hyped technology will pay off.
Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips needed to power AI, put a dent in the wall of worry a couple weeks ago with a quarterly earnings report that soared far beyond analyst estimates and initially eased fears about a Big Tech bubble bursting.
But the tranquility quickly evaporated, leaving Nvidia’s stock price slightly below where it was trading before the company’s stellar earnings report and 15% below its peak price reached in late October when the chipmaker became the first company to be valued at $5 trillion.
The AI jitters have punished Salesforce even more severely. Before the earnings report was released, Salesforce's market value had plunged by 35%, wiping out about $125 billion in shareholder wealth, since Salesforce’s stock price peaked at $369 a year ago.
The downturn has happened even as Benioff has been doing his best to highlight AI's potential benefits while calling upon the flair for salesmanship that he developed while become the become a chief evangelist behind the rise of software subscription services amid the ruins of the dot-com bust a quarter century ago.
Benioff, who owns Time magazine in addition to his Salesforce job, also is among the Big Tech leaders who have forged ties with President Donald Trump this year while trying to persuade the administration to adopt AI-friendly policies to protect U.S. interests as China also works feverishly on the technology.
Salesforce has been primarily focused on creating Ai agents that can automate more customer sales agents while spawning a digital labor force that will take over jobs that have traditionally been filled by people.
In a sign that Benioff intends to practice what he preaches, Salesforce laid off 4,000 of its own customer support workers as its “Agentforce” technology took over more of the responsibilities.
But the corporate customers that buy Salesforce’s services haven't been embracing AI agents as quickly as investors initially thought, turning the company into a “poster child” for the doubts hanging over the technology, said Jay Woods, chief market strategist for investment banking firm Freedom Capital Markets.
The second-guessing hasn’t dimmed Benioff’s AI exuberance – a passion that recently displayed in a resounding endorsement of Google’s latest version of the Gemini technology powering its AI suite.
“We all know that the speed of innovation has exceeded the speed of customer adoption,” Benioff conceded while confidently predicting that dynamic is about to change dramatically as more companies and government agencies build AI services into their operations.
Salesforce is projecting $60 billion in revenue for its fiscal year ending in January 2030 – a target that would require average annual increases of 10% from its forecasted sales of $41.5 billion for its current fiscal year. The company also just completed an $8 billion acquisition of another software maker, Informatica, that is building AI tools to manage corporate data.
“We’re continuing to execute on the path to our $60 billion dream” Benioff said.
FILE - Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff delivers the keynote address at the start of the Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center, in San Francisco, Oct. 14, 2025. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)
BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombians milled into voting stations on Sunday in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential election, choosing between candidates with radically diverging visions for the future of peace in a country haunted by decades of armed conflict.
The vote, seen as a referendum on outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s policies, comes 10 years after Colombia signed an historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
That agreement offered hope to break the nation out of a vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government but violence has roared back since then, coming to a head in the lead-up to the presidential vote. Criminal groups have increasingly launched drone strikes, armed attacks have plagued the race and last June, 39-year-old politician and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was fatally shot at a political rally.
In a country where the fight for peace has long been a part of the political ethos, the question of how to address the conflict is once again dividing the country.
The vote is slated to send a message to Latin America at a time voters are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies, like providing opportunities to youths and rooting out corruption, to solve security ails, turning instead to heavy-handed security crackdowns like El Salvador's. It also comes as the Trump administration is placing renewed pressure on the region.
“Today's election isn't just important for us, it's important for all of Latin America,” said Juan Acevedo, a 62-year-old sociologist walking out of a voting station in Colombia's capital on Sunday morning. “Whoever wins here will suggest to the region if progressive policies will continue or if things are going to return to the right.”
There are 11 candidates running for president, but the election has basically turned into a three-horse race.
Senator and peace-builder Ivan Cepeda — a Petro ally — has led the polls and promises to carry on with Petro's “total peace” initiative to negotiate with the country’s remaining rebel groups and sign peace agreements with them in an effort to resolve the persistent crisis.
While the peace plan has largely failed as criminals have taken advantage of ceasefires with the government, Cepeda and Petro have maintained strong support among many because of progressive policies pushed forward under Petro, such as boosting the minimum wage.
Running against Cepeda are Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, who have vowed to come down on armed groups with a heavier hand.
De la Espriella — a bombastic lawyer known as “The Tiger” — has particularly gained traction among voters in recent weeks for pitching himself as an outsider keen on emulating the heavy-handed tactics used in El Salvador’s war on gangs, which sharply reduced gang violence but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.
Valencia is considered the political protege of Colombia's former president and strongman Álvaro Uribe, who governed from 2002 to 2010 with strong support from the United States and whose government beat back FARC rebels in an offensive that took a massive civilian toll.
Both de la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for U.S. President Donald Trump even as he has taken a more aggressive stance toward Latin America than any U.S. president in decades and has pressured nations like Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico to more forcefully crack down on criminal groups.
If no candidate wins at least 50% of the vote — something extremely rare in Colombia — the two top vote-getters will face a runoff in June.
Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress who was stitching a pair of jeans on Friday in downtown Bogotá, Colombia's capital, said she welcomed an all-out offensive on an expanding slate of criminal groups, regardless of the human cost.
While she approved of Petro’s pushes to improve the country's medical infrastructure, she said she was voting for de la Espriella because violence in rural areas of the country has gotten out of hand. She said negotiating peace pacts was simply “rewarding” armed groups.
“Of course, whenever you come down with a heavy hand, there’s always going to be debate,” she said. “But some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.”
Others, like Acevedo, the sociologist strolling out of a polling station on Sunday with packs of other voters, said a security crackdown like the one promoted by de la Espriella would only be returning to past military campaigns that he said only reinforced Colombia's cycle of violence.
He said he planned to vote for Cepeda, adding that while the government hasn't done a perfect job — failing to pass ambitious reforms and follow through on promises to reduce violence — it was better to continue pushing forward with their political coalition's efforts to take a different approach in addressing the country's violence.
He added that his main critique of Petro's administration was the power grabs made by criminal groups as they negotiated with the government. He said he hoped that if Cepeda won, he would strike a better balance between negotiating peace and maintaining control over those groups.
“We're a country that has lived through 60 years of conflict,” Acevedo said. “The danger here is that we return to the times where everyone is saying that the only way to solve our problems is with bullets and more war.”
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
A voter marks a ballot during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Supporters of presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition gather outside the polling station where he voted during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition gestures to supporters after voting during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Voters check polling information during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
President Gustavo Petro shows a ballot during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Voters line up at a polling station during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement depart a polling station after voting during the presidential election in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Soldiers patrol as voters arrive at a polling station during the presidential election in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Electoral workers set up a voting center in preparation for Sunday's presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
A man rides his motorcycle past the ruins of homes destroyed five months earlier in an attack by dissidents of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in Buenos Aires, Cauca, Colombia, Wednesday, May 20, 2026.(AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga)
Presidential candidate Sen. Paloma Valencia of the Democratic Center party waves supporters during a campaign rally in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement and his running mate Jose Manuel Restrepo, left, raise their fit from behind a bullet proof booth during a campaign rally in Barranquilla, Colombia, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Sen. Ivan Cepeda, presidential candidate of the ruling Historic Pact coalition, speaks to supporters during a campaign rally in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
