Salesforce (CRM) Stock Rises as AI Fears Fade and Agentforce Gains Ground

TLDR

• Salesforce (CRM) stock rose ~3.4% to $179.73, recovering as investor fears about AI disrupting traditional SaaS companies began to ease.
• Agentforce and Data Cloud now generate $2.9 billion in ARR, with Agentforce alone up 169% year-over-year to $800 million.
• In Q4, Salesforce grew revenue at a low double-digit rate while non-GAAP EPS jumped 37% year-over-year.
• CRM trades at roughly 12.7x forward earnings — about 40% below the software industry average — suggesting heavy pessimism is already priced in.
• Wall Street has a Moderate Buy consensus with an average price target of $260.48, implying ~45% upside from current levels.

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Salesforce (CRM) closed Monday up 3.44% at $179.73 after investor sentiment shifted on AI risk in enterprise software. The stock has now fallen 29.1% year-to-date and sits 37.6% below its 52-week high of $288.06 set in May 2025.

Salesforce, Inc., CRM

The move came as market participants began questioning whether AI really poses the threat to legacy SaaS companies that many had feared. That concern — often called the “SaaS Rout of 2026” — had weighed heavily on the sector for months.

The broader mood shift was reinforced by peers. Figma reported 46% revenue growth with early AI monetisation showing real traction. ServiceNow announced a multi-year AI partnership with Experian. Both prints helped make the case that enterprise software companies are embedding AI into their products rather than being replaced by it.

Salesforce had also caught a boost three days earlier, gaining 4.2% as the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing lifted tech sentiment broadly, with the S&P 500 briefly topping 7,500. That summit didn’t produce many concrete deals, but it moved the needle on trade sentiment.

Agentforce Is Gaining Real Traction

Salesforce isn’t just defending its core CRM business. Through Agentforce, the company is letting customers build and deploy AI agents for tasks like customer service, IT support, and billing resolution.

The numbers are hard to ignore. Agentforce and Data Cloud together hit $2.9 billion in annual recurring revenue, with growth topping 200% year-over-year. Agentforce on its own reached $800 million in ARR, up 169%.

What stands out is where the growth is coming from. More than 60% of new bookings came from existing customers — meaning Salesforce is expanding within its installed base rather than relying purely on new logos. That’s a sign of product stickiness, not desperation.

The Informatica acquisition is part of the story too. It helps organise and clean enterprise data so AI agents can operate more reliably across customer systems.

Q4 results backed this up. Subscription and support revenue — which accounts for roughly 95% of total revenue — grew 13% year-over-year. Non-GAAP EPS jumped 37%. These aren’t the numbers of a business being structurally disrupted.

That said, the Current Remaining Performance Obligation grew only 9% in organic constant-currency terms once you strip out foreign exchange effects and the Informatica contribution. Headline figures flatter the picture somewhat.

Valuation Is Pricing In A Lot Of Bad News

For FY27, Salesforce guided revenue to $46 billion at the midpoint — 11% growth — with non-GAAP EPS of approximately $13.15, representing around 5% growth. About 3 percentage points of that is coming from Informatica.

At roughly 12.7x forward earnings, CRM trades at a 40% discount to the software sector average of ~25x. It’s more than 60% below Salesforce’s own five-year historical average of around 45x.

If EPS growth re-accelerates to around 13% in FY28 and 19% in FY29, the stock would be trading at a single-digit multiple on FY29 earnings at current prices — even with a modest re-rating.

Wall Street’s consensus sits at Moderate Buy. Of 37 analyst ratings over the past three months, 27 are Buy, eight are Hold, and two are Sell. The average price target of $260.48 implies roughly 45% upside from current levels.