In all Benioff manner, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff criticizes big tech’s massive AI investment, attacking Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta for their reckless, multi-billion-dollar investments in AI data centers, arguing this spending drains cash with no guaranteed return.
Benioff outlined his company’s strategy of augmenting existing products with AI and using others’ infrastructure as a more sustainable path focused on customer outcomes and a “digital labor revolution,” rather than costly hardware expansion.
“We aren’t building huge $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $100 billion data centers,” Benioff said during Salesforce’s latest earnings call.
“We’re not doing these engineering efforts that may or may not have some kind of huge payoff but will drain all our cash and margin for years.”
Instead, Benioff said Salesforce is “augmenting” its existing product line with AI while relying on “incredible” infrastructure investments made by others. He framed this approach as part of a “digital labor revolution,” where Salesforce focuses on productivity and customer outcomes rather than hardware expansion. AI infrastructure investment has become central to this transformation, shaping how companies allocate resources and redefine efficiency.
Benioff’s comments come as Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta commit record budgets to AI infrastructure. Amazon expects to spend over $100 billion in capital expenditures this year up from $77 billion in 2024 mostly to scale Amazon Web Services and AI infrastructure. Microsoft plans to spend roughly $80 billion on similar efforts, signaling the growing wave of big tech quantum AI investments across the industry.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Has Criticized Microsoft’s Approach to AI
Benioff reserved his sharpest criticism for Microsoft, calling it the “reseller of OpenAI” and questioning whether the company’s AI tools truly deliver business value. Quantum AI investing has fueled corporate rivalry, yet Benioff questioned whether all these high-cost projects yield real innovation or merely inflate expectations.
“Where on their side are they delivering agents? Where in their company have, they done this? Do they have humans and agents working together to create customer success?” he asked. In this context, salesforce CEO wants to explain how AI is impacting the world of investing.
It’s not the first time Marc Benioff criticizes big tech’s massive AI investments, he had targeted the Redmond giant. He previously mocked Microsoft’s Copilot, likening it to the discontinued Clippy assistant, calling the tool “disappointing.”
In response, Microsoft communications chief Frank X. Shaw said Benioff “has no idea what he’s talking about,” suggesting the remarks were a publicity tactic. This debate reflects a larger shift, where companies like Wealthfront AI investing platforms are reshaping how markets interpret automation’s role in decision-making.
Despite the back-and-forth, Benioff insists Salesforce’s own AI agent platform, Agentforce, is driving measurable growth.
“Our goal is to be the number one provider of digital labor in the world,” he said, noting that Salesforce has more than 12,000 Agentforce customers and $1.2 billion in related revenue so far.
The remarks come at a time when Google cuts cloud staff to redirect resources to AI investments, signaling how tech giants are reorganizing priorities.
Investing in Human Skills in the Age of AI
While Benioff champions automation, he stresses that AI should augment, not replace, the human workforce. Appearing on The Logan Bartlett Show, he explained that Salesforce reduced its support roles from 9,000 to 5,000 through AI efficiencies but “successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success.” This vision ties closely to AI value investing, emphasizing how the right balance between human and machine labor can yield sustainable growth.
“Humans are not going away,” Benioff said. “We are working in partnership with these agents, and that’s how I look at it.” For leaders, maintaining this balance also means prioritizing AI investment due diligence—ensuring resources go into projects that complement, not cannibalize, human expertise.
Analysts note that AI’s profitability remains uneven—McKinsey found that nearly eight in ten companies using generative AI see little to no earnings impact. Marc Benioff criticizes big tech’s massive AI investments, however, believes human adaptability will define long-term success: “AI is doing 30% to 50% of our work, but it’s amplifying what people can achieve, not eliminating them.” Meanwhile, Nvidia stock surges after Google’s increased AI spending, underlining the market’s faith in the expanding economic value of artificial intelligence.
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