Salesforce reported great numbers for Q2 2027. But a new big battle for the brain of companies is emerging.
The company has been struggling with a stagnating marketing segment in recent years. However, the latest results brought a change in tone. CFO Robin Washington stated that Agentforce products are growing solidly and they are already seeing first signs of recovery in marketing.
Where's the problem 👇
Salesforce has since changed its reporting method and combined marketing with other products under a broader category called Agentforce Apps. Previously, the marketing segment had practically stagnated for several quarters, and after the change, we can no longer track it separately.
The battle for the corporate AI operating system
When we then look at the latest announcements from Salesforce, Zeta Global, and ServiceNow, all three companies are heading towards a similar goal: to build a central layer through which artificial intelligence will work with corporate data, make decisions, and subsequently execute tasks.
Three major partnerships have emerged in recent months:
1. Salesforce + Anthropic: Claude is being more deeply integrated with Agentforce and Salesforce products. Agentforce has already reached approximately $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue and is growing more than 240% year-over-year. Salesforce's advantage is distribution. Thousands of large companies have been using Salesforce for years. If they also use Claude, Agentforce is a natural way to connect these two layers.
2. ServiceNow + IBM: ServiceNow is building the AI Control Tower, a central layer for managing autonomous systems, AI agents, and corporate processes. Its advantage is a huge existing customer base and a strong position in the internal processes of large companies. IBM adds data and technology infrastructure to that.
3. Zeta Global + Palantir: Zeta is moving its data infrastructure to Palantir Foundry and building Athena on top of it. Palantir brings detailed understanding of how the company operates, while Zeta adds its own information about consumer behavior. The combination of these two layers should create a system that analyzes data and simultaneously decides which customer to contact, with what offer, through which channel, and then executes that action.
And this is where a new big battle in enterprise software may emerge. Until now, companies sold individual programs for sales, marketing, customer support, or internal processes. Now they want to own the intelligent layer above all of them.
Salesforce has access to a huge enterprise base.
ServiceNow is deeply rooted in corporate processes.
Zeta has data on consumer behavior.
Which of these three strategies do you find strongest? 👇