Salesforce (CRM): Stock, Financials, Earnings & Company Overview

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Company Name	Salesforce, Inc.
Ticker Symbol	CRM (New York Stock Exchange)
Founded	March 1999
Founders	Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, Frank Dominguez
CEO	Marc Benioff, Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, United States
Industry	Enterprise cloud software, customer relationship management, and AI agents
IPO	2004, on the New York Stock Exchange
Employees	Roughly 83,000 as of mid 2026
FY2026 Revenue	$41.5 billion, up 10 percent year over year
Dividend	$0.44 per share quarterly, paid since 2024

What Is Salesforce?

Salesforce is the company most credited with popularizing the software as a service, or cloud software, business model in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rather than selling software that companies install and run on their own servers, Salesforce delivers its applications over the internet on a subscription basis, an approach that eventually became the standard model across the enterprise software industry.

Today Salesforce describes itself as the world’s number one AI CRM, offering a broad suite of cloud based applications that help organizations manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and internal communication, all built on a shared data and AI platform. The company has expanded well beyond its original sales tracking tool into a full enterprise software ecosystem, and its most recent strategic focus has centered on Agentforce, a platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents that can complete tasks on behalf of employees and customers.

Company History

Salesforce was founded in March 1999 by Marc Benioff, a former Oracle executive, along with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. The founding team worked out of a one bedroom apartment on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, building a browser based sales automation tool designed to remove the cost and complexity of traditional, on premise CRM software from vendors such as Siebel Systems.

The company survived the dot com crash of the early 2000s despite layoffs, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004. Over the following two decades, Salesforce grew primarily through a combination of organic product expansion and a long series of acquisitions. Notable purchases include ExactTarget in 2013 for digital marketing, Demandware in 2016 for e commerce, MuleSoft in 2018 for application integration, Tableau in 2019 for data visualization and analytics, and Slack in 2021 for workplace messaging and collaboration.

More recently, Salesforce has focused its acquisition strategy on data and AI infrastructure. In late 2025, the company closed its acquisition of Informatica, a data management and integration company, in a deal valued at approximately $9.6 billion, and in June 2026 it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Contentful, a content management platform, to further strengthen its data and content capabilities for AI driven applications. Throughout this period, Salesforce has increasingly positioned itself around agentic AI, introducing its Agentforce platform to let businesses deploy autonomous AI agents across sales, service, and other functions.

Company Milestones

• 1999: Salesforce founded in San Francisco as a cloud based CRM company.
• 2004: Initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRM.
• 2018 and 2019: Acquired MuleSoft and Tableau, expanding into integration and analytics.
• 2021: Completed its acquisition of Slack Technologies.
• 2024: Introduced Agentforce, its platform for autonomous AI agents, and initiated its first ever quarterly dividend.
• Late 2025: Closed its $9.6 billion acquisition of Informatica.
• June 2026: Signed a definitive agreement to acquire Contentful, expanding its content and data capabilities.

Founders

Salesforce was co founded by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. Benioff, who had previously spent over a decade at Oracle, led the vision and business strategy for the new company, while Harris served as the technical lead behind the early cloud platform. Moellenhoff focused on the infrastructure needed to reliably deliver software over the internet, and Dominguez contributed early business strategy and go to market thinking. All four began working together in a rented apartment in San Francisco in 1999, developing a prototype in a matter of weeks before formally launching the product later that year.

CEO

Marc Benioff is the co founder, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce, a role he has held for nearly the entire life of the company, aside from a brief period as co-CEO with Bret Taylor. Benioff has been the primary public face of Salesforce’s strategy for over two decades, including its early positioning against traditional on premise software vendors, its long running acquisition strategy, and its current push into agentic AI through Agentforce. He works closely with Robin Washington, President and Chief Financial and Operating Officer, who oversees the company’s financial strategy, capital allocation, and operational execution, including recent share repurchase and dividend decisions.

Headquarters

Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, California, where its offices are anchored by Salesforce Tower, one of the tallest buildings on the West Coast of the United States. The company maintains a large global footprint beyond its headquarters, with major offices and data operations across the United States, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region, supporting its large enterprise customer base around the world.

Business Segments

Salesforce reports its financial results primarily across two broad revenue categories, subscription and support revenue, and professional services and other revenue, with subscription and support making up the vast majority of total revenue. Within subscription and support, the company further breaks down performance across several product categories.

• Sales: The original Sales Cloud product line, covering core sales force automation and pipeline management tools.
• Service: Service Cloud products for customer support, case management, and field service operations.
• Platform and Other: The underlying Salesforce Platform, including custom application development tools and, increasingly, Agentforce AI agent capabilities.
• Marketing and Commerce: Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud products supporting digital marketing campaigns and online retail experiences.
• Data and Integration: Tableau analytics, MuleSoft integration tools, and the newly acquired Informatica data management platform, increasingly marketed together as Data 360.
• Slack: Workplace messaging and collaboration, sold both standalone and as an integration point for Agentforce AI agents.

Professional services and other revenue, a much smaller category, covers consulting, implementation, and training services that help large customers deploy and customize Salesforce products.

Products and Services

Salesforce offers one of the broadest enterprise software portfolios in the industry, organized under its Agentforce 360 platform umbrella.

• Sales Cloud: Core CRM tools for managing leads, opportunities, and sales pipelines.
• Service Cloud: Customer service and support tools, including case management and field service dispatch.
• Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud: Tools for running digital marketing campaigns and operating online storefronts.
• Slack: A widely used workplace messaging and collaboration platform, acquired in 2021.
• Tableau: A leading data visualization and business intelligence platform.
• MuleSoft: An integration platform that connects different applications, data sources, and devices.
• Data 360 (including Informatica): A data management and integration layer designed to unify customer data across systems to power AI applications, strengthened significantly by the 2025 Informatica acquisition.
• Agentforce: Salesforce’s platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents that can handle sales, service, and other business tasks with limited human intervention, now generating more than $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
• Salesforce Platform and Heroku: Development tools that let customers and partners build custom applications on top of Salesforce’s infrastructure.

Salesforce also offers industry specific solutions tailored to sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, along with Salesforce Starter packages aimed at small and mid sized businesses.

Revenue Breakdown

Salesforce has grown from roughly $34.9 billion in annual revenue in fiscal 2024 to a record $41.5 billion in fiscal 2026, the year ended January 31, 2026, reflecting continued expansion of its core subscription business alongside contributions from recent acquisitions.

Revenue by Product Category

In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, subscription and support revenue from Agentforce related applications, spanning sales, service, marketing, commerce, and Slack, totaled approximately $6.9 billion, up roughly 9 percent year over year. Revenue from Data 360, the headless data platform, and other subscription products increased about 25 percent to roughly $3.7 billion, boosted significantly by the Informatica acquisition. Management noted particular softness in the Tableau and commerce product categories during the quarter, even as core Sales, Service, Slack, and Data 360 offerings continued to grow at a healthy pace.

Financial Performance

Salesforce has continued to expand both revenue and profitability, even as the pace of top line growth has moderated compared with the company’s earlier hypergrowth years.

Metric	FY2026 (Full Year)	Q1 FY2027
Revenue	$41.5 billion	$11.1 billion
Revenue Growth (YoY)	10 percent	13 percent
GAAP Operating Margin	20.1 percent	21.1 percent
Non-GAAP Operating Margin	34.1 percent	34.8 percent
GAAP Diluted EPS	n/a	$2.42, up 52 percent YoY
Non-GAAP Diluted EPS	n/a	$3.88, up 50 percent YoY
Operating Cash Flow	$15.0 billion, up 15 percent	$6.7 billion, up 3 percent

For fiscal 2026, Salesforce returned $14.3 billion to shareholders, combining $12.7 billion in share repurchases with $1.6 billion in dividend payments, and the board authorized a new $50 billion share repurchase program, replacing prior unused authorizations. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the company reported record revenue of $11.1 billion, up 13 percent year over year, with GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.42 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $3.88, both comfortably ahead of Wall Street expectations. Following the results, Salesforce raised the midpoint of its full year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to a range of $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion, while reiterating a non-GAAP operating margin target of 34.3 percent for the year.

Management has pointed to continued momentum in Agentforce, Data 360, and Slack as key growth drivers, while acknowledging ongoing softness in its Tableau analytics and commerce product lines. The company has said it expects organic revenue growth to reaccelerate in the second half of fiscal 2027 as newer AI and data products scale further.

Stock Information

CRM stock has experienced significant volatility over the past two years. Shares reached an all time high closing price of $363.22 in December 2024, before falling sharply through much of 2026 amid investor concern that AI powered tools and agents, including from competitors, could eventually reduce demand for traditional seat based software subscriptions. At one point in 2026 the stock recorded a run of 14 consecutive daily losses, and shares were down roughly 33 percent for the year as of late May 2026, even after the company posted strong quarterly results. Sentiment improved somewhat in early July 2026 after at least one major Wall Street firm upgraded the stock, arguing that AI disruption concerns were overstated relative to the company’s fundamentals.

Key Stock Facts

Item	Detail
Exchange	New York Stock Exchange
All Time High	$363.22, reached December 4, 2024
52 Week Range	Approximately $146.32 to $276.80
Trailing EPS (TTM)	Approximately $8.61
Dividend Yield	Approximately 1 percent
Next Earnings Date	Expected around September 2, 2026, for Q2 fiscal 2027 results
Wall Street Rating	Consensus Buy among covering analysts, though price targets vary widely, ranging from roughly $160 to $475, reflecting differing views on AI related disruption risk

Salesforce trades at a notably lower earnings multiple than many other large cap software companies, a valuation gap that reflects investor uncertainty about how agentic AI tools, including its own Agentforce platform and those of competitors, will ultimately affect long term demand for traditional software seats. Supporters point to the company’s strong free cash flow, growing dividend, and large buyback program as reasons the stock may be undervalued relative to its fundamentals.

Dividends

Salesforce initiated its first ever quarterly dividend in February 2024 at $0.40 per share, a notable milestone for a company long associated with reinvesting all available cash into growth and acquisitions rather than shareholder distributions. Since then, the board has raised the dividend several times, most recently to $0.44 per share in May 2026, an increase of roughly 5.8 percent year over year. The dividend is paid quarterly and is currently well covered by both earnings and free cash flow, with a payout ratio in the range of 20 percent of earnings. Combined with its substantial share repurchase program, Salesforce has increasingly positioned itself as a mature, cash generative technology company that returns significant capital to shareholders alongside continued investment in growth areas such as AI and data infrastructure.

Competitors

Salesforce competes across a wide range of enterprise software categories, facing both large diversified technology companies and more focused specialists.

Company	Ticker	Overlap With Salesforce
Microsoft	MSFT	Dynamics 365 CRM and ERP products, along with broader enterprise AI and productivity tools
Oracle	ORCL	Enterprise applications, database technology, and cloud infrastructure, including its own CRM and customer experience products
SAP	SAP	Enterprise resource planning and customer experience software, particularly strong among large multinational corporations
HubSpot	HUBS	CRM, marketing, and sales software aimed primarily at small and mid sized businesses
ServiceNow	NOW	Workflow automation and enterprise service management, increasingly overlapping with Salesforce in AI driven business process automation
Adobe	ADBE	Digital marketing and experience software, competing most directly with Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud

Among these, Microsoft is generally viewed as Salesforce’s most significant broad based competitor given its scale, deep enterprise relationships, and rapidly expanding AI and productivity software portfolio, while HubSpot competes more directly for small and mid sized business customers and ServiceNow increasingly overlaps with Salesforce in enterprise workflow and AI agent use cases.

Recent News

• July 2026: At least one major Wall Street research firm upgraded Salesforce stock, arguing that fears over AI driven disruption to its business model were overstated relative to the company’s underlying growth and margin profile.
• June 2026: Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Contentful, a content management platform, to strengthen its data and content capabilities for AI applications.
• June 2026: Salesforce announced a partnership to support fan engagement and tournament operations at the FIFA World Cup 2026 and FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027.
• May 2026: Salesforce reported record first quarter fiscal 2027 results, with revenue of $11.1 billion, up 13 percent year over year, and raised its full year revenue guidance.
• May 2026: The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.44 per share, an increase from the prior $0.42 per share dividend.
• February 2026: Salesforce reported record fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 results, with total remaining performance obligation exceeding $72 billion, and authorized a new $50 billion share repurchase program.
• Late 2025: Salesforce closed its $9.6 billion acquisition of Informatica, significantly expanding its data management and integration capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Salesforce actually do?

Salesforce provides cloud based enterprise software that helps businesses manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and internal communication. Its products are typically sold as ongoing subscriptions rather than one time software purchases, and the company has increasingly focused on adding autonomous AI agent capabilities through its Agentforce platform.

Is Salesforce profitable?

Yes. Salesforce has been solidly profitable on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis for several years. In fiscal 2026, the company reported a GAAP operating margin of 20.1 percent and a non-GAAP operating margin of 34.1 percent, along with $15.0 billion in operating cash flow.

Does Salesforce pay a dividend?

Yes. Salesforce introduced its first ever quarterly dividend in February 2024 at $0.40 per share and has since raised it several times, most recently to $0.44 per share in May 2026, alongside a large ongoing share repurchase program.

Why has Salesforce stock struggled in 2026?

Much of the pressure on CRM stock in 2026 has come from investor concern that agentic AI tools, both from Salesforce and its competitors, could eventually reduce demand for traditional seat based software subscriptions. This concern weighed on the stock even as the company continued to post double digit revenue growth and record profitability metrics.

What is Agentforce?

Agentforce is Salesforce’s platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents that can complete sales, service, and other business tasks with limited human intervention. It has become a central part of the company’s growth strategy and had surpassed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue as of mid 2026.

Who are Salesforce’s main competitors?

Key competitors include Microsoft, particularly through its Dynamics 365 products, along with Oracle, SAP, HubSpot, ServiceNow, and Adobe, each of which overlaps with Salesforce in different parts of the enterprise software market.

When did Salesforce go public?

Salesforce completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004, several years after being founded in 1999, and has traded under the ticker symbol CRM ever since.

What is Salesforce’s revenue guidance for fiscal 2027?

Following its first quarter fiscal 2027 results, Salesforce raised its full year revenue guidance to a range of approximately $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion, representing growth of roughly 10 to 11 percent compared with fiscal 2026.

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Sources include Salesforce SEC filings and press releases, company investor relations materials, and third party financial data providers. Figures such as stock price, market capitalization, and analyst price targets change frequently and were approximate as of early July 2026.