Salesforce and NVIDIA Forge Strategic Collaboration to Advance AI Agent Innovation

Rhea-AI Summary

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and NVIDIA have announced a strategic collaboration to develop advanced AI capabilities for enterprises. The partnership aims to combine NVIDIA's AI platform with Salesforce's Platform and Agentforce to deliver optimized predictive and generative AI workflows. Key aspects include:

1. Development of autonomous agent and interactive avatar experiences
2. Enhancement of AI capabilities in Salesforce Data Cloud
3. Creation of AI-powered avatars using NVIDIA ACE and Agentforce
4. Expected deployment of billions of Agentforce Agents in coming years

The collaboration focuses on improving customer and employee interactions, offering real-time solutions, and enhancing productivity across various business functions. Use cases include crisis management, real-time weather impact for travel and logistics, and live event management.

Positive

• Strategic partnership with NVIDIA to develop advanced AI capabilities
• Expected deployment of billions of Agentforce Agents in coming years
• Enhanced AI platform performance and model throughput to improve productivity
• Development of AI-powered avatars for more engaging customer interactions
• Acceleration of processing in Salesforce Data Cloud for quicker insights

Negative

• None.

Tech Expert

This collaboration between Salesforce and NVIDIA marks a significant leap in enterprise AI capabilities. By integrating NVIDIA's AI platform with Salesforce's Agentforce, we're looking at a potential revolution in how businesses interact with customers and manage data. The key innovations here are:

• Enhanced AI agents capable of handling complex tasks like crisis management and real-time customer support
• AI-powered avatars for more engaging human-like interactions
• Accelerated data processing in Salesforce Data Cloud

These advancements could dramatically improve efficiency and customer experience across various industries. However, the success will largely depend on the seamless integration of these technologies and their adoption by businesses. It's a bold move that could set new standards in enterprise software, but we'll need to see real-world implementations to gauge its full impact.

Market Research Analyst

This partnership has significant market implications. Salesforce, a leader in CRM, joining forces with NVIDIA, a powerhouse in AI and GPU technology, creates a formidable alliance in the enterprise AI space. Key points to consider:

• The collaboration could accelerate AI adoption in businesses, potentially expanding the market for both companies
• Salesforce's expectation of "billions of Agentforce Agents" being deployed signals confidence in massive scale adoption
• This move may pressure competitors to form similar partnerships or accelerate their AI development

While the potential is enormous, the market's response will depend on the actual performance and ease of implementation of these AI solutions. If successful, this could reshape the competitive landscape in enterprise software and AI services.

Financial Analyst

From a financial perspective, this collaboration presents intriguing opportunities and challenges:

• Potential for increased revenue streams for both Salesforce and NVIDIA through new AI-powered services
• Possible boost in Salesforce's customer retention and acquisition rates due to enhanced CRM capabilities
• NVIDIA could see growth in its enterprise AI segment, diversifying its revenue beyond gaming and data center markets

However, investors should consider:

• The substantial R&D costs likely associated with this ambitious project
• Potential regulatory scrutiny as AI becomes more prevalent in business operations
• The time it may take for this collaboration to materially impact financial results

While the long-term outlook appears positive, short-term financial impacts may be as the technology is developed and adopted.

Companies will co-innovate to define the future of enterprise software with Salesforce Agentforce and NVIDIA AI Enterprise platform

Salesforce expects billions of its Agentforce Agents to be deployed in the years to come, creating new customer and employee experiences on the Salesforce Platform

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and NVIDIA today announced a strategic collaboration to develop advanced AI capabilities for the enterprise with autonomous agent and interactive avatar experiences. The companies will work together to deliver optimized predictive and generative AI workflows by bringing together the NVIDIA AI platform, which includes accelerated computing and AI software, with the Salesforce Platform and Agentforce. With this collaboration, Agentforce agents will enable new insights and improved productivity across the sales, service, marketing, and IT teams that rely on the industry-leading Salesforce CRM as the one place for all their customer data.

“Together with NVIDIA, we’re leading the third wave of the AI revolution — moving beyond copilots to humans and intelligent agents working seamlessly to drive customer success,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “This is what AI is meant to be — powered by the Salesforce Platform and Agentforce, every Trailblazer can harness AI to its fullest potential. By combining NVIDIA’s AI platform with Agentforce, we’re supercharging AI performance and creating dynamic digital avatars, delivering more engaging, intelligent, and immersive customer experiences than ever before.”

“In the future, every company, every job will be enhanced by a wide range of AI agents – assistants that will transform how we work,” said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. “NVIDIA and Salesforce are bringing together our technologies to accelerate the development of AI agents for companies to supercharge their productivity.”

Enhanced platform collaboration to deliver AI agents

With Salesforce and NVIDIA, organizations will have access to next-generation AI and data capabilities as part of the Salesforce Platform and Agentforce, a groundbreaking set of tools to create and customize agents that come with a collection of pre-built agents. The new collaboration will provide Salesforce customers with accelerated value from AI investments while differentiating and maintaining a competitive edge. Using Salesforce’s AI-powered predictive and generative technologies with NVIDIA NIM microservices and NVIDIA NeMo for model customization, all as part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise platform, businesses are expected to see advances in AI platform performance and model throughput to improve productivity and effectiveness of interactions across industries.

Use cases include:

• Crisis management: In the event of a product recall or service outage, an agent would efficiently handle high volumes of customer inquiries, offering timely and empathetic responses while escalating critical issues to human agents.
• Real-time weather impact for travel and logistics: AI agents could predict and adjust travel or shipping routes based on live weather data, preventing delays and disruptions. They would automatically update the CRM data to inform customers and stakeholders, ensuring timely and accurate communication about any expected changes or necessary adjustments to their travel plans or delivery schedules. This proactive approach would enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
• Real-time customer support resolution: AI agents could instantly provide customers with solutions by pulling relevant CRM information during live avatar chats. For example, if a customer asked for help with an order issue, the agent avatar would access real-time shipping data to resolve the query.

In addition to advanced AI capabilities, the collaboration will enhance AI capabilities by accelerating processing in Salesforce Data Cloud, which unifies and harmonizes structured and unstructured customer data in real time. Data Cloud provides a “Zero Copy” capability, enabling Salesforce customers to quickly and easily connect to their enterprise data, which is then retrievable by Agentforce to analyze and act on. NVIDIA’s full-stack accelerated computing platform will optimize compute resources, leading to quicker insights and improved performance across the AI platforms.

The collaboration between Salesforce and NVIDIA marks a pivotal advancement in technology, equipping businesses with the tools to harness data with unprecedented speed and efficiency.

Transforming customer and employee interactions with AI-powered avatars

Salesforce and NVIDIA are also coming together to collaborate on the future of AI agent avatars with NVIDIA ACE, a collection of digital human technologies and NIM microservices, and Agentforce. These AI-powered avatars will deliver more engaging, human-like experiences when customers or employees interact with Agentforce agents by using multi-modal AI models for speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and contextual visual responses. In addition, companies can expect to have access to these advanced digital human capabilities from NVIDIA in out-of-the-box Agentforce agent experiences and NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints to help customers build and deploy agents quickly and intuitively. AI-powered avatars could be valuable in cases like:

• Real-time sales coaching feedback: An AI agent analyzes the conversation and suggests in-the-moment ways to improve engagement, such as product recommendations, correcting potential misstatements, or highlighting key talking points with feedback. The feedback is delivered by a sales agent avatar to demonstrate a better or alternative approach.
• Live event management: AI avatar kiosks manage real-time ticketing, seating, and customer preferences during events, offering instant adjustments to maximize attendance and experience.
• Employee training assistance: On-demand, personalized training avatar assistants for employees would ensure employees receive relevant lessons and coaching in real time during on-the-job training.

Learn more and join us at Dreamforce with NVIDIA:

• Join us at Dreamforce with an exclusive Fireside chat between Jensen Huang & Marc Benioff or listen in on Salesforce+
• Learn more about Agentforce
• Read the Agentforce Press Release

About Salesforce

Salesforce helps organizations of any size reimagine their business for the world of AI. With Agentforce, Salesforce's trusted platform, organizations can bring humans together with agents to drive customer success—powered by AI, data, and action. Visit www.salesforce.com for more information.

Any unreleased services or features referenced here are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240917057818/en/

Media

Lucie Vietti-Curtis

pr@salesforce.com

Source: Salesforce

FAQ

What is the main focus of the Salesforce (CRM) and NVIDIA collaboration?

The main focus is to develop advanced AI capabilities for enterprises, including autonomous agent and interactive avatar experiences, by combining NVIDIA's AI platform with Salesforce's Platform and Agentforce.

How will the Salesforce (CRM) and NVIDIA partnership benefit customers?

Customers will have access to next-generation AI and data capabilities, improved AI platform performance, and enhanced productivity across sales, service, marketing, and IT teams using Salesforce CRM.

What are some potential use cases for the AI agents developed by Salesforce (CRM) and NVIDIA?

Potential use cases include crisis management, real-time weather impact for travel and logistics, real-time customer support resolution, and live event management.

How will AI-powered avatars enhance customer interactions for Salesforce (CRM) users?

AI-powered avatars will deliver more engaging, human-like experiences using multi-modal AI models for speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and contextual visual responses.