Salesforce hits the hyper-space button on AI with Einstein GPT
Salesforce (CRM) is tossing its hat into the AI ring.
The company formally announced Einstein GPT today, which it says is the world's first generative AI customer relationship management (CRM) technology. Salesforce said Einstein GPT can generate personalized emails for salespeople to fire off to customers and create specific responses for key customer questions. It will also be capable of auto-generating code for developers.
Salesforce shares finished the session slightly lower amid a vicious Fed chief driven sell-off.
"With this next generation of generative AI, what it means is that AI is going to be able to do even more for you," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Yahoo Finance Live last week. "It can code for you. It can write letters for you if you're a sales executive or a service executive. It's going to be able to create content. There's a lot of things that AI is able to do today that we couldn't do 10 years ago."
Salesforce added two finer points to its splashy debut as the stock jumped in premarket trading.
First, the company says it's combining OpenAI's enterprise-grade ChatGPT technology with its private AI models to drive relevant and trusted AI-generated content for customers.
Second, Salesforce Ventures is launching a $250 million generative AI fund that invests in up-and-coming players in the space.
Benioff, who believes his company has now hit the hyper-space button on its turnaround plan, is particularly jazzed up by what generative AI could do for his business long term.
"We're really about to enter an incredible new world where AI is going to really help all of our customers be more productive, have higher performance, and ultimately be far more profitable," he added.
Wall Street also appears to be jazzed.
"Following last week’s strong earnings report and the very visible commitment of CEO Marc Benioff to the next layer of growth and success at Salesforce, we view today’s announcement as a very encouraging piece of this strategy. We also think this announcement is evidence of Mr. Benioff’s active presence in the strategic and operational management of the company as he continues to lend his visionary talents to the future of technology," said Macquarie analyst Sarah Hindlian-Bowler.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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