- Salesforce CEO says company can justify 3x to 4x price increases with tools up to 10x more valuable
- Customers prefer seat-based pricing for greater predictability
- The company is not concerned that the reduction in staff will lose subscriptions per position.
Salesforce CEO Mac Benioff has alluded to a return to seat-based pricing for agent AI, after the company experimented with usage- and conversation-based models.
It seems that customers were demanding predictability and flexibility in terms of pricing, and have so far liked the company’s Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA).
“When we started Agentforce, we were talking about, oh, it’s going to be a lot per conversation… but clients have pushed for more flexibility,” Benioff said on last week’s earnings conference call.
What is the future of AI pricing?
Salesforce believes there are also opportunities to charge more for AI: Customers could expect “three, four, or ten times more value” from the company’s products, so it could easily justify “three or four times the ability to multiply customer monetization.”
However, AI comes at a cost, because it appears that companies are purchasing the technology to improve worker output rather than replacing them entirely, leaving them with two bills for worker resources (human and AI). “In most companies, human beings are also going to increase,” explained chief revenue officer Miguel Milano.
In this sense, Salesforce does not seem to be too concerned about charging per position, because companies are not eliminating workers (and therefore positions) in a significant way.
Additionally, half (55%) of companies that laid off workers to replace them with AI said they regretted their decision in a survey earlier this year, and many leaders have even ruled out workforce reductions as a result of AI.
On the other hand, it’s Salesforce customers who may not reap the rewards of seat-based pricing, and some users barely scratch the surface of the tools available, making their seats a poor value for money.
Looking ahead, it is unclear how the landscape will develop, but a combination of seat-based and consumption-based pricing could be an effective way to ensure customer value.
Speculation about a review of pricing strategies was broken when the company posted a 9% year-on-year increase in quarterly revenue. Now in its fourth and final quarter of fiscal 2026, Salesforce has also raised its full-year revenue expectations from $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion.
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