Salesforce Just Proved the Naysayers Wrong — $60B Target, 40% Margins, and an AI Comeback That’s Turning Wall Street Bullish

Salesforce (CRM) kicked off its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week with a confident message to investors: growth is back, margins are rising, and AI is no longer a drag on the business but a key accelerator. The software giant set ambitious long-term financial goals that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, reigniting bullish sentiment after a cautious year for enterprise software. The highlight came from its Analyst Day presentation, where management outlined a path to more than $60 billion in revenue by fiscal 2030, representing over 10% organic CAGR from fiscal 2026 through 2030, alongside a 40% non-GAAP operating margin target. The combination of growth and profitability targets — a “Rule of 50” by 2030 — was enough to send shares up more than 6% early Thursday to $257 before fading with broader market weakness to around $245.

The financial announcements marked Salesforce’s most aggressive guidance since the pandemic era, underscoring management’s renewed confidence in its model following several quarters of restructuring and margin repair. The company also announced a new $7 billion share repurchase program to be executed over the next six months, signaling both balance sheet strength and management’s conviction that the stock remains undervalued. The buyback follows an expansion of the authorization by $20 billion during its last earnings release. Analysts viewed the move as a clear sign that Salesforce is shifting toward shareholder-friendly capital allocation while keeping its focus on efficiency and growth.

Analyst reaction to the financial targets was broadly positive. Needham, Mizuho, and Stifel all reiterated Buy or Outperform ratings with price targets ranging from $300 to $400. Needham called the guidance “materially ahead of Street expectations,” emphasizing management’s confidence in double-digit organic growth despite prior fears that AI would cannibalize Salesforce’s software business. Mizuho said the event reinforced its belief that 2026 will mark an inflection point for growth, calling CRM one of its top picks in enterprise software. Deutsche Bank and Cantor Fitzgerald echoed that sentiment, noting that the 10% CAGR and margin outlook establish a clear framework for durable growth through the decade. Even cautious RBC analysts, while maintaining a Sector Perform rating and a $250 target, acknowledged that the financial outlook “easily exceeded prior expectations.”

Management credited much of the anticipated acceleration to Agentforce, its flagship agentic AI platform, which is driving what co-CEO Marc Benioff called “the Agentic Enterprise era.” After a slow start last year, Agentforce has become the centerpiece of Salesforce’s product and revenue strategy. The new Agentforce 360 platform, unveiled at Dreamforce, connects Sales, Marketing, Commerce, Service, Slack, and Tableau into a unified AI orchestration layer. It introduces production-grade agents, native voice capability, and agent-to-agent communication within a governed, observable framework. The platform integrates with major language model vendors including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s Gemini Enterprise — the latter through a newly expanded strategic partnership announced at the event.

Benioff emphasized that the company’s vision is to “embed agentic AI into every workflow, every role, and every industry,” and CRO Miguel Milano added that the four largest LLM vendors have tripled their investments in Salesforce applications over the past year. Needham analysts highlighted this as “the best possible rebuttal to the notion that generative AI will destroy enterprise software — if LLM vendors can’t replace CRM, how could customers?” This shift in narrative — from AI as a competitive threat to AI as a growth multiplier — resonated strongly with investors and analysts alike.

The financial logic behind Salesforce’s “Agentic Enterprise” strategy is clear: Agentforce deployments drive higher renewal spending and cross-sell opportunities across the company’s multi-cloud suite. Management noted that Net New Annual Order Value (NNAOV) — a leading indicator of bookings momentum — has turned positive for the first time since FY23 and is projected to outgrow total average order value by FY27. That improvement underpins the expected acceleration to double-digit growth within 12–18 months. Piper Sandler analysts called this “the clearest sign yet that CRM’s top-line inflection is real,” with NNAOV growth now aligning the entire company behind a shared internal metric.

Salesforce also outlined plans to evolve its pricing structure to support AI adoption. The newly announced Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA) allows for unlimited Agentforce and Data 360 usage, giving customers cost predictability and encouraging broader AI integration across organizations. For smaller enterprises, Salesforce introduced flexible credit-based pricing. Management said customer feedback indicated that many are willing to pay more for predictability and full-stack access to AI features, which could drive revenue acceleration through 2027.

While most of the headlines focused on the financials, Salesforce also showcased product and ecosystem updates supporting its AI push. Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) was repositioned as the intelligence layer that feeds contextual data to Agentforce agents. Slack is evolving into the “agentic home,” integrating AI-generated insights and tasks directly into workflows. Live demos featured enterprise use cases from FedEx, Williams-Sonoma, PepsiCo, and Dell, showing measurable improvements in efficiency, automation, and customer engagement. Salesforce Ventures announced it has already deployed $850 million of its $1 billion AI investment fund, further embedding itself into the enterprise AI ecosystem.

Market reaction was positive but measured. After an early surge to $257, shares cooled to $245 alongside a modest pullback in broader tech indices. Still, the rally reflected renewed confidence that Salesforce can deliver both growth and margin expansion simultaneously — a combination investors had doubted just months ago. The stock remains up roughly 12% from pre-conference levels, as the market absorbs the significance of its five-year roadmap.

In sum, Dreamforce 2025 marked a strategic reset for Salesforce: a recommitment to profitable growth, a demonstration of financial discipline, and a clear message that agentic AI is a tailwind, not a threat. If management executes on its FY30 roadmap — and Agentforce adoption accelerates as promised — Salesforce may once again define the next era of enterprise software the way it defined the SaaS era two decades ago.