NEW YORK, Jan 9, 2026, 14:19 (EST) — Regular session
Salesforce shares edged down 0.2% to $260.01 in afternoon trading on Friday after the company laid out its Spring ’26 product release, set to begin rolling out from Feb. 23. A softer U.S. jobs report also nudged rate expectations back onto the table for growth stocks. Payrolls rose 50,000 in December versus forecasts of 60,000, and the unemployment rate eased to 4.4%, the Labor Department said. 1
Why it matters now: Salesforce sits in a part of the market where rates still call the shots. When bond yields move, software valuations often follow, sometimes by more than the day’s headlines really warrant.
Investors are also trying to sort demos from dollars in the latest AI wave. Salesforce is pitching “AI agents” — software that can answer questions and take actions inside business apps — and the next few months will show whether customers pay up or pause.
On Friday, Salesforce said its Spring ’26 release rolls out new AI, data and automation features for sales and service, including an AI-powered sales workspace and updates to its Shield security offering. The company cast the release as another step in its push for an “agentic” setup where people and AI agents work together. 1
Salesforce, a day earlier, released an “AI Fluency Playbook” it says is designed to help companies train workers to use AI in day-to-day tasks. “When we get AI fluency right, AI moves from a technology innovation into a workforce advantage,” said Nathalie Scardino, Salesforce’s president and chief people officer. The company also cited internal usage metrics, saying 85% of its employees feel confident using AI tools at work. 2
Salesforce also published a survey it conducted with YouGov, saying 76% of workers reported their preferred generative AI tools don’t have access to company data or work context. Srini Tallapragada, Salesforce’s president and chief engineering & customer success officer, cautioned that “AI that’s disconnected from enterprise systems never earns sustained use.” Salesforce said the survey covered 1,207 U.S. adults, with fieldwork conducted on Dec. 4–5. 3
Salesforce had another readout pointing in the same direction, this time in retail. It said online sales reached $1.29 trillion globally and $294 billion in the United States over the Nov. 1–Dec. 31 holiday stretch, with AI and agents driving $262 billion of holiday spend. Salesforce also said traffic coming from AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity converted about nine times more often than referrals from social media, and flagged that “BOPIS” — buy online, pick up in store — picked up late in the season. 4
Broader stock indexes climbed after the jobs report, with the S&P 500 notching a record intraday high. Fed funds futures — contracts tied to the Fed’s policy rate — priced in just a 4.8% chance of a cut at the Fed’s Jan. 27–28 meeting, Reuters reported. “Payrolls were a little bit light relative to consensus,” Tim Ghriskey, a senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder, said. 5
Still, it’s not hard to see how this goes the other way. If hiring softens further and boards rein in discretionary IT spending, software budgets can tighten in a hurry, and new AI features could take longer to show up in renewals and add-ons.
Next up: Salesforce is slated to show up at the J.P. Morgan 2026 Healthcare Conference on Jan. 13, with President of Sales Mark Sullivan down as the speaker. The company is also expected to post results on Feb. 25 after the bell, per Yahoo Finance’s earnings calendar. 6
