Bernstein has reduced its rating on Salesforce.com from Outperform to Sector Weight and eliminated its price target, citing weak signs of commercial traction for the company's Agentforce artificial intelligence product.
In a note, Bernstein analyst Jackson Ader said the firm's investigative checks and customer conversations "have not been strong, nor has the feedback been on Agentforce," adding that disclosed metrics "does not signal building momentum." Ader also pointed to a recent CIO survey in which Salesforce was "being a standout for the wrong reasons."
Despite this downgrade, Bernstein continues to characterize Salesforce as an incumbent platform that benefits from customer entrenchment - a position the firm held when it pushed back against the "Death of SaaS" narrative. That said, Bernstein now adds that the evidence for a durable acceleration powered by Agentforce "is further out than we'd expected, if it plays out at all."
The bank reported two consistent themes in customer feedback. First, customers often lack sufficiently organized data to support meaningful AI initiatives. Second, in the view of many customers, Agentforce "as a product, just isn't there." Those two issues undercut the pathway to near-term AI-driven revenue expansion, according to Bernstein's checks.
Bernstein's CIO survey also showed a tilt toward reduced emphasis on Salesforce in near-term IT budgets: Ader noted that more CIOs expect to deprioritize Salesforce within their IT budgets over the next 12 months than expect to increase spending.
On financial disclosure, Bernstein said it has struggled to find corroborating evidence for management's commentary that net-new average order value (AOV) is expanding faster than overall AOV growth. The bank flagged this as a point where the public filings did not appear to substantiate management's messaging.
Regarding valuation, Bernstein observed that while Salesforce's multiple is low on a historic basis, it sits near the median compared with peers and is above peers on a growth-adjusted basis. The firm did not make claims beyond this relative assessment.
Implications of Bernstein's update include closer scrutiny of AI product execution and customer data readiness across enterprise software vendors, and potential pressure on IT spending allocations if CIOs shift priorities away from entrenched vendors. The downgrade reflects uncertainty about the timing and substance of any Agentforce-driven inflection in Salesforce's growth.