Dreamforce ‘26 is just around the corner, and big names in the world of AI, tech, and show business are heading out for the three-day conference, which is taking place in San Francisco on September 15-17.
Some interesting speakers have now been confirmed for the biggest Salesforce event of the year. Let’s take a look at who’s going to be there.
Dario Amodei and… CRM Vibe-Coders?
Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, will be there – perhaps unsurprising given the announcement of Claudeforce, a partnership which brings Claude and Salesforce closer together.
Amodei and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff launched Claudeforce together last month, with Benioff hailing Claude as the “world’s #1 AI”. At Dreamforce, Amodei and Benioff will share their vision for the Claudeforce partnership.
The CEO and Co-Founder of AI app builder Lovable, Anton Osika, will also be there. This is an interesting appearance for a Salesforce event, considering that, in February, Lovable posted a story about how Gabe Larsen, CRO at AI agent company Atonom, cut his business’s $40,000 Salesforce bill to $1,200 with “no functionality lost”.
“Does it have every bell and whistle of HubSpot or Salesforce? No. Does it need to? Also no. It’s purpose-built for how they actually operate,” Lovable wrote in their blog post. Lovable is the vendor that helped build the replacement.
So the CEO of an app which is meant to vibe-code away Salesforce might have a few interesting things to say at Dreamforce.
Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, and the Future of AI
Marc Benioff will be speaking with HE. Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, about how the UAE has made AI a “national priority”, with lessons about “bringing AI into government”.
Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris and Guillermo Rauch, CEO & Founder, Vercel, will discuss how to ‘move fast without breaking trust’, and building AI which scales when stakes are high.
Founder and ex-CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, will also be speaking with Marc Benioff, exploring what it takes to “scale ambitious ideas across software, robotics, fulfillment and autonomy”. Kalanick, who resigned from Uber in 2017, recently transformed his latest venture City Storage Systems, the parent of CloudKitchens, to Atoms, adding a new focus on robotics.
Education, AI, and the Science Guy
Bill Nye, who is billed as an Emmy Award-winning science educator, bestselling author, and advocate for scientific literacy – but who most millennials and older will know as ‘The Science Guy’ – will also be making an appearance.
He is set to talk about AI and “keeping us all safe with this remarkable technology”, according to a promotional YouTube video from Salesforce. As Salesforce and the broader tech industry face questions about ethical concerns around AI usage, this topic comes up in a few other places too.
Alessandra Sala, Co-Chair of UNESCO’s Women for Ethical AI; President of Women in AI, will also be there, speaking about responsible use of artificial intelligence, governance, diversity, and human-centered technology.
Renée Richardson Gosline, Sr. Lecturer & Head of Human-First AI Lab at MIT, specializes in human behaviour, decision-making, and how humans and AI work together – which aligns nicely with Salesforce’s entire philosophy at the moment of “humans and agents working together”.
Her session is titled ‘Unsmoothed: The Beauty of Friction in AI’, covering the topic of when every company has the same AI, what becomes of human judgment?
Ethan Mollick, Professor of Entrepreneurship at The Wharton School, is a thought leader in the field of innovation and AI, studying the effects of artificial intelligence on work, entrepreneurship, and education. He has focused on how AI and simulations can change classroom education.
His session is titled ‘Ethan Mollick’s Case for Staying Human at Work’.
And the Celebrities
And it just wouldn’t be a Salesforce conference without legendary actor Matthew McConaughey making an appearance, and Dreamforce ‘26 is no exception. He and fellow perennial Dreamforce participants will.i.am, and self-help guru and entrepreneur Toby Robbins will be there again this year.
Academy Award-winning actress and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon is also set to share her perspective on business, brand building, leadership, and the power of storytelling to shape business and culture.
Summary
Tech leaders including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Uber Founder Travis Kalanick, and the CEO of vibe-coding app Lovable are set to speak at Dreamforce ‘26 in San Francisco, along with celebrities like Matthew McConaughey, Bill Nye, and will.i.am.
Topics range from how to use AI ethically, to effective use in government, and even how we can properly utilize it in education. You may notice a continuation of a theme here – that obviously being AI. Two years since the launch of Agentforce, AI is still at the forefront of everything Salesforce at the moment.
If you’re wondering what this year’s big announcement might be – beyond Claudeforce – check out my earlier article here.
