For decades, it seemed like the sky was the limit for Salesforce (CRM), the cloud-based enterprise software and customer relationship management platform.
The company was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez, who built their platform in a tiny apartment on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill (a closet functioned as their server), proving they could innovate from the get-go.
Salesforce made its product accessible to businesses of all sizes by offering its CRM as a subscription service over the internet (SaaS) rather than as an expensive, locally installed software, which was more common at the time.
As a result, businesses were finally able to integrate their sales, marketing, customer service, and analytics together for a “360-degree” view of their customers — and Salesforce took off.
Since its IPO on June 23, 2004, CRM shares have soared by nearly 2,000%.
According to Benzinga, if an investor had bought $1,000 of CRM stock 20 years ago, those shares would be worth $20,797.11 in March 2026.
But Salesforce’s skies have darkened recently, due to its struggles to prove that its investments in AI are delivering tangible ROI.
In fact, reports have surfaced that company insiders don’t even understand how to use its new technology, let alone explain it to customers.
Rewind to last year, when the turbulence started. On February 26, 2025, Salesforce reported $37.9 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue, which was a 9% increase from the previous fiscal year.
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However, its revenue growth estimates slowed to 8.5%, down from 11% the prior year.
In addition, Salesforce’s margins dropped to 27.2% from 29.4% in 2024. This suggested that the company’s AI investments had added significant costs to the company — without increasing its bottom line.
As a result, CRM shares sold off and have yet to recover: Salesforce ended the year down 20% in 2025.
Salesforce’s turmoil stems from its company-wide shift to “Agentic AI.” Through its Agentforce platform, launched on September 12, 2024, AI agents can take on tasks that were once delegated to people. These agents are considered more intuitive than chatbots, and they need less human oversight, as well.
On the heels of its rollout, Salesforce posted strong quarterly results. CNBC reported that the company had secured 200 deals for the product and thousands more in the pipeline. CRM shares closed at an all-time high of $365.07 on December 4, 2024.
