Salesforce has announced a ramped version of its flagship AI product Agentforce with extra features – just two months after launching the original.
CEO, Marc Benioff, had teased the arrival of “Agentforce 2.0” earlier this month, telling those present at the company’s Q3 earnings call they would “not believe” what they’d see when the product launched on December 17 in San Francisco.
Why So Soon?
Agentforce “1.0” is still a pretty fresh product, having been announced at Dreamforce ‘24 in September and becoming generally available the following month.
But Salesforce is, once again, claiming that their latest product will be a game-changer, though the company has not yet spelled out exactly how, beyond a few improvements to currently existing features.
The company writes on a landing page for the product: “Agentforce 2.0 redefines AI agents with Slack integration, enhanced CRM and analytics capabilities, and greater accuracy with an upgraded Atlas Reasoning Engine. Join us to see how Agentforce 2.0 transforms every corner of your business.”
While Salesforce likely wants to keep its cards close to its chest to build hype before the big reveal on December 17, we might have already seen hints of what to expect – at Dreamforce ‘24.
Attendees were told about Slack becoming the “AI-powered work operating system”, and a demonstration was given, showing Agentforce working through Slack.
Amy Bauer, Product Experience Lead at Slack, demonstrated how Salesforce CRM features can be integrated into Slack and vice versa, meaning one team which primarily deals with Salesforce and another which mainly works in Slack can each conveniently collaborate through a channel which appears in both interfaces.
Additionally, Agentforce can further integrate the two teams by, for instance, copying information from a Request for Proposal (RFP) document from the Salesforce CRM as it is submitted and turning it into Slack messages for other team members in real-time.
A specialist RFP Agent can then assign different sections of a task to different team members (tagging them in messages) and draft responses for questions it has knowledge of.
Because Agentforce is powered by the entire Salesforce platform, the agent can then pull out relevant data and insights from Tableau, helping the team decide whether to adjust their prices based on historical data on win rates vs. pricing, for example.
In the Dreamforce demonstration, the RFP Agent suggests that the team lower the price for the proposed deal. When the humans accept, the AI updates the pricing proposal document, submits it to the deal team for approval, and shares it in the group channel for transparency. This process cuts out a large amount of back-and-forth between departments.
“This is AI acting on behalf of the team but always keeping humans in the loop.” Amy Bauer, Product Experience Lead at Slack
How this will be ‘furthered’ by the up-and-coming Agentforce 2.0 remains to be seen, so those who attend the San Francisco launch on December 17 may want to keep their eyes open for enhanced Slack functionality.
Salesforce’s mention of “greater accuracy” with an upgraded Atlas Reasoning Engine also stands out, as it comes amid news that fellow tech giant, Open AI, has launched a newer version of the ChatGPT o1 model – o1 pro mode – which comes as part of a $200-a-month subscription.
The newest version of o1 comes with increased reasoning capacity, and ‘thinks longer’ to generate more reliable and comprehensive results.
It will be interesting to see whether Agentforce 2.0 is simply an upgrade to Salesforce’s existing AI capabilities or, like with Open AI, a more premium product – with a bigger price tag to boot.
Final Thoughts
Any artist will likely tell you that it’s rare they feel one of their creations is ever truly “finished”, but unlike a painter, tech giants can, in fact, constantly update their work, even after release.
We are still in the early days of artificial intelligence – and that certainly goes for agentic AI – so it’s perhaps unsurprising that we’re seeing a second iteration of Agentforce (if that is, in fact, what Agentforce 2.0 is) so soon after it was released.
It may simply be a better, faster, and stronger version of what’s already available, but it’s still worth bearing in mind Marc Benioff’s words: “You’ll see Agentforce 2.0 for the first time, and you’re not going to believe it. You’re not going to want to miss it.”
Those who believe the hype may want to mark December 17 in their diaries.