00:00we were actually lucky just a few months ago we had the founder of finn on our podcast and we
00:07learned a lot from him actually this is really you know you could see with ai how capitalism shows up
00:12this was an ai native firm which came up with agents so think about it this way you want to
00:18go to a chatbot but the chatbot is not tied to a particular software package this is out of a
00:24box
00:24chatbot it would work on any program that's behind the curve so if you go to let's say a healthcare
00:30firm and and you're you're trying to solve some issues or customer service issues and these guys
00:35would help you and and that's what they're buying i think it's a very smart move on salesforce's part
00:40i believe salesforce has um its own ai agent tool agent force is this does this perhaps suggest that
00:47agent force isn't developing or or progressing the way that or scaling the way that salesforce wants
00:53it too i think you're absolutely right i think this is a signal that maybe agent force is only
00:59made for the software package that's behind it which is salesforce's package this one is a generic
01:05chatbot that can go across the board so i think that's something that you know people would need
01:10because they're only not looking at the data that resides in salesforce but other areas as well and
01:16frankly speaking these guys have done a phenomenal job of coming up with their own models own technology
01:22that sits on top of some of these systems of record i think it's also a defensive move by salesforce
01:28because one thing is if people are buying an out-of-a-box agent from finn or intercom what's
01:34it called before then down the road you can actually start storing data in their database you know then
01:40then the system of engagement becomes a system of record and that's not a good thing for salesforce
01:45because that's really their bread and butter so i think there is a little bit of defensive move as
01:50well but you're absolutely right i think this would help their agent for practice as well
01:56so uh stock of salesforce is up just under one percent today but it is down almost 37 percent
02:02year to date on a rag salesforce is and one of the challenges as you've mentioned to us before is
02:07some of these software companies software as a service companies they just gotta
02:11show that they can compete against ai or compete in a world of ai is this acquisition one way for
02:18salesforce to say hey we're serious about you know integrating ai into our products and offerings
02:24no i as this is definitely that's the case so i'll tell you another company that is in that same
02:29rub called sierra this is from the co-founder of uh i mean this company uh was founded by a
02:36guy by
02:36then brett taylor who is the chairman of uh open ai who used to be a co-ceo of uh
02:43salesforce and he
02:44was also the chairman of twitter in the last one and a half two years that company has just taken
02:49off
02:50i think the valuation is close to 20 billion dollars and it does the same thing out of a box
02:55white label
02:56agents that can then interact on the behalf so it becoming the front office or the front face of some
03:02of these apps and i think with this acquisition salesforce can defend itself from somebody like
03:09sierra who can you know eventually come out and start taking market share away for them so salesforce
03:15i think is a good deal for them that they are more aggressive uh right at the front of anything
03:20ai
03:20and they're not just depending on their own um product agent force so honor i'm just kind of looking
03:26ahead do you expect other um enterprise software companies like a salesforce to come out and make
03:32similar acquisitions if this is defensive for salesforce what does it do to other companies
03:39you know in in its um field of vision yeah so this wasn't just in the realm of customer service
03:45we call
03:46this a cx agent um and there are like three private companies here sierra as i said 20 billion dollars
03:52that's too big for to be honest anybody to buy frankly from this point because salesforce is the
03:57biggest when it comes to customer service right now there is another company called decacon which
04:01is i believe the last valuation was somewhere around 8 billion but the question is who's going to
04:06actually buy them because the natural buyer would have been salesforce and the third one was intercom
04:11in that framework
Comments