Salesforce shares have experienced a notable downturn over the past month as investors grow increasingly wary of how rapid advances in generative AI could disrupt established software business models. Over the past four weeks, the stock has underperformed the broader software sector by more than 8%, reflecting deepening investor anxiety. Analysts at three major brokerages have lowered their revenue growth forecasts for Salesforce, projecting mid-single-digit revenue expansion for fiscal 2027 compared with previous estimates closer to 10%. Concerns center on potential margin compression as the company ramps investment in AI infrastructure and talent to match peers and new entrants, while also navigating customer demands for transparent, reliable AI outputs in enterprise settings.

In response to slowing subscription revenue growth, which cooled to just under 9% year-over-year in its latest quarter, Salesforce has turned to its Data 360 platform to drive larger, higher-value deals. The initiative integrates proprietary customer data lakes with Einstein copilot capabilities, enabling sales and service teams to craft more personalized proposals. Early deployments with ten Fortune 500 customers have yielded an average 15% uplift in deal size and a 20% reduction in sales cycle length. Salesforce executives have set an internal target of Data 360 contributing 5% of total subscription revenue by the end of next fiscal year, a strategic pillar aimed at offsetting headwinds in its core CRM offerings.

At its recent Dreamforce conference, Salesforce announced the general availability of Slackbot, positioning it as the first AI 'personal agent for work' fully embedded within the Slack platform. Built on Agentforce 360 architecture, Slackbot leverages contextual signals—such as project deadlines, CRM records and cross-team chat threads—to surface actionable insights and automate routine tasks. In pilot programs across 50 enterprise accounts, usage metrics show a 30% increase in message resolution speed and a 25% drop in manual ticket escalations. Salesforce projects that widespread adoption of Slackbot could drive incremental subscription revenue growth of $300 million over the next two years by upselling AI-powered collaboration capabilities to its existing 150,000 Slack customers.