In an exclusive conversation with CNBC-TV18, Thattai emphasized that these components are essential for the successful integration of AI-driven agents in both customer-facing and internal operations. “Trust was our top priority when we initiated this journey,” he noted, explaining that agents must be secure, have proper access to data, and be seamlessly integrated into business workflows.
The company is also advancing innovations in three significant areas—templates to ease adoption, observability for monitoring agent performance, and enhanced interoperability. “We’re introducing hundreds of industry templates. We’re also innovating on how AI can aid in developing and refining agents,” he remarked.
Thattai pointed out that customer engagement and feedback are crucial in shaping the development trajectory of Agentforce. For instance, Lennar utilizes AI agents for SMS lead generation, while OpenTable has adopted agents for its services aimed at both restaurants and diners. “We’re observing customer engagement at every phase. Their input is directly shaping the evolution of our tools and offerings,” he stated.
Below is the excerpt of the interview.
Q: Marc Benioff has expressed a strong belief that AI agents will be groundbreaking—that digital labor will be the path forward—and this will not only enhance productivity but also contribute significantly to global GDP. How is that unfolding?
Thattai: We anticipate that future workforces will be hybrid, comprising both humans and agents. We believe that agentic technology has matured to a point where every organization and function will effectively manage a workforce that includes both humans and agents collaborating.
We’ve experienced rapid innovation lately, particularly with consumer LLMs. At Salesforce, our focus has been on ensuring this technology is ready for enterprise applications. By making it suitable for enterprises, we expect to fundamentally shift customer and employee experiences. It’s an ambitious vision, and we’re excited about the role Salesforce will play.
Q: What is the current state of adoption? What kind of traction and momentum do you observe today?
Thattai: We’re witnessing substantial activity and momentum from customers across various sectors. Currently, thousands of customers are exploring Agentforce. With Agentforce achieving $100 million in ARR, it stands as the fastest-growing product Salesforce has ever launched.
Customers are pushing adoption, experimenting with the technology at different maturity stages. For instance, OpenTable in the U.S. began using agents on the B2B side—serving their restaurant partners—and has expanded to cover diners, thus creating a comprehensive customer lifecycle experience.
We see customers trying different approaches: some adopt it for their entire customer lifecycle—encompassing marketing, sales, and customer service—while others focus on enhancing productivity and efficiency for their employees. Agentforce is designed to meet a wide range of use cases, and we’re experiencing significant adoption and enthusiasm from customers to create improved experiences.
Q: As the momentum grows—potentially accelerating—what do you envision this $100 million ARR could grow to in a few years? What are your aspirations and ambitions? What growth potential do you see?
Thattai: Considering the scope of the digital workforce, it’s a massive market opportunity—we’re discussing the global enterprise landscape. Our current focus is on obsessing over customer success at every step. That’s where our time and resources are concentrated.
This new category has emerged in the last six to eight months—one that we believe will define the evolution of workforces. The priority now is to help customers achieve the right outcomes in a trusted and secure manner, ensuring they have the appropriate data and processes in place to support that.
We believe this is the essential pathway to unlocking the full potential of this technology.
Q: As a category creator, you’re essentially developing the market, establishing templates for adoption and usage. What key challenges are you encountering? Interoperability is one major issue people discuss. What’s your perspective on that?
Thattai: In building agentic technology, we’ve identified three key aspects that customers must address.
First, they need to trust that the agent is secure, accurately managing their data, and delivering dependable experiences—whether for external customers or internal operations. Trust has been our foremost principle since we embarked on this generative journey a couple of years ago. It’s been Salesforce’s core value for 25 years, and its significance has never been higher in this agentic realm.
Second, agents must have access to the right data. This is a critical area where we partner closely with customers—ensuring that the right data is activated within Salesforce and accessible to agents. That’s where our collaboration with Data Cloud is vital.
Third, we focus on the customer’s business processes. Salesforce plays a crucial role in sales, service, and marketing operations, and we work deeply with customers to drive outcomes.
Once these foundational elements are established, we focus on managing agents—monitoring their performance, enhancing them, and ensuring continuous improvement.
Lastly, we confront the interoperability challenge you mentioned. Just as humans operate across various business functions and even between companies, it’s essential for agents to do the same, and thus an interoperability layer is critical. We’ve invested significantly in this area and will be sharing more about it this week—highlighting how our agents can interoperate across diverse data ecosystems and tools to complete their tasks.
Q: What innovations can we expect now? What are your priorities moving forward?
Thattai: Expect a wave of innovation across all these fronts. On the development side—we’re unveiling hundreds of industry templates designed to facilitate a smooth start. We’re also enhancing how AI aids in constructing agents and refining that experience.
Next is observability—ensuring agents perform as intended. We’re investing in tools to enhance performance and guarantee agents achieve the outcomes for which they were designed.
Lastly, our focus on interoperability is paramount—making sure agents can function across organizational boundaries and with various systems. Often, a single task will span multiple tools, so this interoperability layer is crucial, and we’re excited about the investments we’re making in this area.
Q: Regarding investments, how much more do you anticipate needing to invest in the future?
Thattai: The significant advantage we have at Salesforce lies in our platform. We’re building on 25 years of a highly extensible, secure, and robust foundation. At its core, this platform guarantees privacy and trust in every interaction, and it’s already well-integrated with other data systems and tools. Agentforce benefits from all these capabilities.
Tremendous innovation has already occurred in the lead-up to Agentforce—developing tools for building, observing, and now ensuring interoperability for agents across complex architectures.
We’re observing customer engagement at every phase. For example, Lennar employs agents for SMS lead generation, with their next steps focusing on observability and management. We’re collaborating closely with them to enhance testing and analytics tools.
In more intricate setups—like OpenTable—the service agent functions within a tool ecosystem that OpenTable utilizes. These businesses will soon inquire about how agents operate within those tools, which is where our capabilities around trusted, contextual, and authenticated interoperability will begin to roll out.
Watch the accompanying video for the complete conversation.
