Salesforce expands Agentforce AI and partners with Anthropic

Salesforce is expanding its Agentforce platform with job-ready AI agents designed to automate complex, long-term tasks in sales, customer service, and HR. These agents, such as 'Carter' for shopping and 'Paige' for HR, are built to learn from interactions and work across departments. The company has also introduced a long-horizon runtime to help agents maintain context over multiple sessions.

In a major strategic move, Salesforce has partnered with Anthropic to integrate the Claude model into its ecosystem. This integration, known as 'Claudeforce', makes Claude the reasoning engine for Slack and Agentforce. Salesforce holds an equity stake in Anthropic exceeding $300 million and plans significant further spending on Anthropic tokens through 2026.

In practical application, Australian telecommunications company Telstra is utilizing Salesforce-powered Agentforce agents to manage customer service guarantee obligations. The AI automates processes such as validating eligibility and calculating refunds for service restorations, reducing the administrative load on over 1,000 contact center staff.