Salesforce Stock Pops as Q3 2026 Earnings, AI Deals and AstraZeneca Partnership Lift Guidance

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has triggered a fresh wave of headlines after posting record third‑quarter fiscal 2026 results, raising its full‑year outlook and signing a high‑profile AI deal with AstraZeneca. Yet despite the post‑earnings stock pop and new enterprise wins, CEO Marc Benioff is still fighting to convince Wall Street that Salesforce’s aggressive artificial intelligence strategy will translate into lasting shareholder returns. ^[1]

Q3 2026 by the numbers: record revenue, fatter margins

For its fiscal third quarter ended October 31, 2025, Salesforce reported:

Revenue: about $10.3 billion, up 9% year over year
Subscription & support revenue:$9.7 billion, up 10%
GAAP operating margin:21.3%
Non‑GAAP operating margin:35.5%
Operating cash flow:$2.3 billion, up 17%
Free cash flow:$2.2 billion, up 22% ^[2]

On the bottom line, Salesforce delivered adjusted EPS of $3.25, handily beating the roughly $2.86 Wall Street was expecting and improving from about $2.41 a year earlier. Most trackers put revenue essentially in line with consensus at around $10.26–$10.30 billion. ^[3]

The company’s current remaining performance obligation (cRPO) — a key forward‑looking metric that captures contracted revenue not yet recognized — climbed 11% to $29.4 billion, while total remaining performance obligation (RPO) rose 12% to $59.5 billion, underscoring a still‑solid pipeline despite a more cautious software spending backdrop. ^[4]

Guidance raised: AI momentum baked into Salesforce’s 2026 outlook

The standout from the quarter wasn’t just the beat — it was the outlook.

Salesforce raised its full‑year fiscal 2026 guidance, and now expects:

Revenue:$41.45–$41.55 billion, up 9–10% year over year
Adjusted EPS:$11.75–$11.77, above the prior range of $11.33–$11.37 ^[5]

For the current quarter (Q4 FY26), Salesforce is projecting $11.13–$11.23 billion in revenue, implying 11–12% growth and topping many pre‑earnings estimates in the $10.9 billion range. ^[6]

Management explicitly tied this stronger outlook to the traction of its AI‑centric portfolio — particularly Agentforce and Data 360 — and to the recently closed $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, which deepens Salesforce’s data management stack for AI workloads. ^[7]

Agentforce, Data 360 and the $60 billion AI dream

Benioff has bet Salesforce’s future on becoming what he calls an “agentic enterprise” — one where AI agents handle a growing share of digital work across sales, service, marketing and industry‑specific workflows.

The Q3 report put hard numbers behind that vision:

Agentforce + Data 360 ARR: nearly $1.4 billion, up 114% year over year
Agentforce ARR alone: more than $500 million, up 330%
Agentforce deals: over 18,500 signed to date, including more than 9,500 paid deals, up 50% quarter over quarter
Tokens processed via Salesforce’s LLM gateway: more than 3.2 trillion
Data 360 records ingested in Q3:32 trillion, up 119% year over year ^[8]

Benioff has also reiterated a long‑term revenue target of $60 billion by fiscal 2030, implying roughly 10% compound annual growth from the new FY26 range — a goal he framed as the culmination of Salesforce’s AI‑driven transformation. ^[9]

The paradox: big AI numbers, skeptical investors

Despite the stronger guidance and explosive growth in AI metrics, Salesforce remains a symbol of the market’s unease with the AI trade.

Before the earnings release, Salesforce shares were down nearly 30% for 2025, even as the broader tech sector rallied. Over roughly the last year, the company has seen about 35% of its market value erased from a peak stock price near $369, wiping out around $125 billion in paper wealth. ^[10]

In an Associated Press profile, Benioff is portrayed as battling a “wave of investor skepticism” toward AI, even as he touts a 37% jump in quarterly profit to about $2.1 billion and revenue growth near 9%. Yet investors remain worried that AI hype may be outrunning real‑world adoption — not just at Salesforce but across Big Tech. ^[11]

Analysts have also flagged that Salesforce’s top‑line growth has decelerated toward high single digits, a far cry from its earlier hyper‑growth era. While margins are expanding, the company now has to prove that AI can keep both revenue and profitability trending higher in a more mature, competitive software market. ^[12]

Inside the V2MOM: Benioff’s four‑pillar AI strategy

To convince Wall Street that Salesforce’s AI story is more substance than buzzwords, Benioff has been unusually transparent about his playbook.

In a new interview with Business Insider about his annual V2MOM strategy document (“Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measurements”), Benioff laid out four pillars for the coming fiscal year: ^[13]

Data foundation
- The top priority is hardening Salesforce’s data layer, integrating Informatica, MuleSoft and Data 360 so customer data is “harmonized, federated and integrated”.
- The rationale: without clean, well‑governed data, large language models hallucinate and enterprise AI fails.
Core applications
- Salesforce’s traditional CRM clouds, plus Slack and Tableau, sit on top of that data foundation.
- The strategy is to infuse these existing apps with AI, not replace them.
Agentforce platform
- Agentforce is the flagship AI agent layer that orchestrates workflows across those apps and data sources.
- Benioff says the product has “dramatically evolved” over the last year as customers move from pilots to production usage.
Custom AI agents by industry and role
- The plan is to deliver tailored agents for verticals like retail, automotive and life sciences, as well as internal tools like more capable Slackbots for employees.
- The goal: make AI agents feel less like generic chatbots and more like specialized digital colleagues.

This structured narrative is clearly aimed at investors who worry Salesforce is chasing AI fads rather than executing a disciplined roadmap.

AI at Salesforce is already changing work — and jobs

Benioff has repeatedly claimed that AI now does roughly 30–50% of the work inside Salesforce, from software engineering to customer service, with internal AI systems reportedly achieving around 93% accuracy on many tasks. ^[14]

The Associated Press also notes that Salesforce has laid off about 4,000 customer support workers as its Agentforce technology took over more of their responsibilities — a concrete and controversial example of AI replacing human labor even as the company insists it is creating “higher‑value” roles. ^[15]

At the same time, Salesforce argues that many customers are still in the early innings of AI adoption. Benioff himself has acknowledged that the “speed of innovation has exceeded the speed of customer adoption”, which helps explain why investors view Salesforce as something of a “poster child” for the disconnect between AI enthusiasm and near‑term revenue. ^[16]

December 5 update: AstraZeneca deal, dividend and a fresh stock pop

Fast‑moving developments since the earnings release are helping flesh out Salesforce’s AI narrative — and have given the stock an additional boost as of December 5, 2025.

AstraZeneca chooses Agentforce Life Sciences

On December 4, Salesforce announced that AstraZeneca has selected Agentforce Life Sciences for Customer Engagement as its unified global platform for interacting with healthcare professionals. ^[17]

The deal will see AstraZeneca:

Consolidate healthcare professional insights across teams
Use AI‑powered “next‑best action” recommendations to orchestrate field and digital engagement
Employ Salesforce’s Model Context Protocol and Agent Fabric to coordinate internal and external AI agents across brands and regions

Industry commentary frames this as a “breakthrough moment” for Agentforce in life sciences, building on a pipeline that already includes more than 70 organizations and early adopters such as Pfizer and Fidia, according to Salesforce’s own life sciences materials. ^[18]

Coverage of the deal notes that Salesforce shares jumped about 3.7% to roughly $247.46, with some outlets highlighting the AstraZeneca win as evidence that large enterprises are beginning to standardize on Salesforce for AI‑driven customer engagement. ^[19]

New quarterly dividend

In parallel, Salesforce’s board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.416 per share, payable on January 8, 2026 to shareholders of record as of December 18, 2025. The dividend, introduced earlier this year, reinforces the company’s shift into a more mature, cash‑generative phase while still investing heavily in AI. ^[20]

What Wall Street is saying today (December 5, 2025)

Margin expansion and profitability story

A new analysis from Simply Wall St published December 5 emphasizes that Salesforce’s net margin has climbed to about 17.9% over the last 12 months, up from 16% a year earlier, with trailing net income around $7.2 billion on roughly $40.3 billion of revenue. Analysts there point out that earnings have grown faster than revenue, strengthening the bull case that AI‑driven automation and workflow integration can expand margins even as top‑line growth slows. ^[21]

At around $247 per share, Salesforce trades at roughly 32–33x trailing earnings — slightly above the broader U.S. software sector, but below some high‑growth peers. Simply Wall St estimates a discounted cash‑flow fair value near $350, implying roughly 30% upside if the company can hit its growth and margin goals. ^[22]

“Not an AI leader — but maybe undervalued”

A separate commentary from Investor’s Business Daily argues that Salesforce is not a leading builder of foundational AI models but still could be a major winner as a “picks and shovels” provider of AI‑enabled enterprise software. The piece highlights: ^[23]

The Q3 EPS beat ($3.25 vs. $2.86 expected)
Roughly 9% revenue growth to about $10.3 billion
A $20 billion increase to Salesforce’s stock‑buyback authorization, bringing the total program to around $50 billion
An estimate from 7investing that CRM shares could be about 40% undervalued, despite being down more than 25% year‑to‑date and trading below their 200‑day moving average

The implicit message: Salesforce doesn’t need to invent the next GPT‑level model; it can license or partner for core AI and focus on orchestrating agents and data around its sprawling CRM footprint.

Big money steps in: Amundi boosts its stake

In a fresh filing summarized by MarketBeat on December 5, Amundi disclosed that it increased its Salesforce holdings by about 26% in Q2, to 7.76 million shares worth roughly $2.1 billion, representing about 0.81% of the company and making CRM its 16th‑largest position. Overall, institutional investors and hedge funds now hold more than 80% of Salesforce’s shares. ^[24]

That deep institutional ownership cuts both ways: it can magnify downside when sentiment turns, but it also means professional investors are positioning for a possible multi‑year recovery if the AI strategy delivers.

The bigger picture: can Salesforce turn AI hype into durable growth?

Putting it all together, the Salesforce story as of December 5, 2025 looks like this:

Fundamentals: Revenue is growing just under double digits, but profitability and cash flow are ramping faster, thanks to margin discipline and at‑scale cloud economics.
AI traction: Agentforce and Data 360 have reached $1.4 billion in ARR, with triple‑digit growth and marquee customers like AstraZeneca, reinforcing Salesforce’s claim that AI is already a material driver of the business. ^[25]
Skepticism: The stock’s ~30% drawdown this year shows investors are still unconvinced that AI spending — internally and by customers — will justify the valuation, particularly with revenue growth no longer in the teens. ^[26]
Strategy clarity: Through the V2MOM and recent interviews, Benioff has articulated a relatively coherent AI roadmap built on data unification, application integration and industry‑specific agents, rather than pure research‑lab breakthroughs. ^[27]

For investors, the next few quarters will likely hinge on:

How quickly AI pilots convert into large‑scale deployments
Whether Salesforce can keep non‑GAAP margins in the mid‑30s while still investing in growth
The pace of enterprise AI adoption in slower‑moving sectors like government, financial services and healthcare
The integration and monetization of Informatica and other acquired assets

For customers, the open question is whether the promised “agentic enterprise” — where human teams and AI agents work side by side — delivers better outcomes without unacceptable risks around data governance, compliance and workforce disruption.

Bottom line

Salesforce’s latest quarter and the early December news flow support Benioff’s argument that the company is finally putting real numbers behind its AI story: stronger profitability, growing AI‑linked ARR, a rising backlog and flagship wins like AstraZeneca.

But the stock’s still‑depressed valuation and persistent skepticism suggest investors are treating this as “show me” time. If Salesforce can prove over the next few years that AI agents don’t just power splashy demos but sustainably lift growth and margins, 2025’s slump may look like a painful reset before the next leg higher. If not, the company risks becoming a case study in how even well‑positioned incumbents can struggle to harvest the full value of the AI revolution.