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Tech layoffs 2025: The biggest job cuts in Silicon Valley and beyond
Salesforce cuts 4,000 jobs as AI takes over half of customer service tasks
Salesforce uses an “omnichannel supervisor” platform that coordinates between human and AI agents.
The mass layoffs contrast sharply with Benioff’s comments earlier this year.
Salesforce has laid off 4,000 customer support employees as artificial intelligence takes on a growing share of its service operations. Chief executive Marc Benioff confirmed the cuts during an appearance on the Logan Bartlett podcast released on Friday, saying the company had reduced its support workforce from 9,000 to 5,000.
“I was able to rebalance my head count on my support,” Benioff said. He reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because he needed less heads. The downsizing amounts to nearly a 45% cut in the support division of the cloud software giant.
The move comes as Salesforce deploys AI agents that now handle around half of all customer conversations, with human staff managing the remainder. Benioff described the shift as “eight of the most exciting months of my career,” highlighting how quickly AI had reshaped company operations.
The technology has also been rolled out in sales. Benioff revealed that Salesforce had built up a backlog of more than 100 million uncalled sales leads over 26 years due to limited staffing. “We now have an agentic sales [system] that is calling back every person that contacts us,” he said.
Salesforce uses an “omnichannel supervisor” platform that coordinates between human and AI agents. Benioff likened the handover process to Tesla’s self-driving cars, explaining that AI could recognise when it was unable to handle a task and prompt a human to step in.
The mass layoffs contrast sharply with Benioff’s comments earlier this year. In a July 2025 interview with Fortune, he dismissed fears of AI-driven job losses, insisting that “the humans are not going away” and that AI would augment rather than replace workers.
SPOTLIGHT
The leaders highlighted how AI is emerging as a critical enabler in this shift from marketing’s traditional focus on new customers to a more sustainable model of driving growth from existing accounts.
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