- Salesforce CEO says company can justify 3-4x price increases with up to 10x more valuable tools
- Customers prefer seat-based pricing for improved predictability
- The company is not concerned that the reduced number of employees will lose their subscriptions per seat
Salesforce CEO Mac Benioff has hinted at a return to seat-based pricing for agent AI after the company experimented with usage and conversation-based models.
It appears that customers demanded predictability and flexibility in terms of pricing and have so far been happy with the company’s Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA).
“When we first started with Agentforce, we talked about, oh, it’s going to be so much per conversation… but customers have been pushing for more flexibility,” Benioff said on last week’s earnings call.
What is the future of AI pricing?
Salesforce believes there are also opportunities to charge more for artificial intelligence – customers could expect “three or four times or 10 times more value” from the company’s products, so it could easily justify “three times, four times the ability to multiply the monetization on customers.”
However, AI comes at a cost because it appears that companies are buying the technology to enhance worker output rather than replace it entirely, leaving them with two employee resource bills (human and AI). “In most companies, people will also increase,” Chief Revenue Officer Miguel Milano explained.
To this tune, Salesforce doesn’t seem to be that bothered about charging per seat, because the companies do not significantly drop workers (and therefore places).
Furthermore, 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 managers have even written off headcount reductions as a result of AI.
On the flip side, Salesforce’s customers may not reap the benefits of seat-based pricing, with some users barely scratching the surface of the available tools, making their seats poor value for money.
Looking ahead, it’s unclear how the landscape will play out, but a mix of seat-based and consumption-based pricing could be an effective way to secure customer value.
Speculation about an overhaul of pricing strategies erupted as the company posted a 9% year-over-year increase in quarterly revenue. Now in its fourth and final quarter of fiscal 2026, Salesforce has also raised its full-year revenue guidance from $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion.
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