Salesforce shares rise after Bank of America upgrades the stock to Buy and raises its price target to $285, citing the potential for AI adoption to deepen enterprise reliance on its software platforms.
Salesforce shares rose 3% after Bank of America upgraded the stock to Buy from Underperform and raised its price target to $285 from $160. The upgrade follows Salesforce’s strategic push into AI and its acquisition of analytics startup Loops.
Bank of America’s upgrade reflects expectations that broader AI adoption could increase demand for Salesforce’s existing software platforms rather than replace them. According to analyst Tal Liani, large enterprises are likely to retain established systems that manage data, workflows and compliance as they introduce AI tools.
Liani said his earlier concern was that AI could disintermediate software companies. However, conversations with chief information officers and other market participants suggest that large enterprises are unlikely to replace platforms that house their business logic, data, workflows and compliance frameworks.
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“If anything, AI should deepen dependence on these platforms,” Liani wrote.
The data layer establishes governed context, while applications such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud provide business logic and workflows, Liani explained. The agentic layer, led by Agentforce, supplies reasoning and orchestration, while Slack and the Anthropic-powered Claude integration, Claudeforce, enable natural-language interaction.
Liani said so-called vibe coding and in-house development may address isolated use cases but fall short when managing enterprise-scale data, governance and workflow complexity.
“We believe Salesforce offers one of the most comprehensive approaches to enterprise AI adoption,” he added, referring to the company’s four-layer architecture.
Loops uses machine learning to analyze business performance, explain changes in key metrics and identify potential opportunities. Salesforce plans to integrate the startup’s technology into Tableau, its data visualization and analytics platform.
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However, uncertainty remains over Salesforce’s growth outlook. Slower customer adoption of AI could delay the expected financial benefits, while AI-related revenue remains relatively small compared with the company’s overall business. Investors will be watching to see whether its expanding AI offerings translate into stronger sales growth.
The stock upgrade comes two months after Salesforce announced layoffs in Washington state. The company cut 59 jobs across its Seattle and Bellevue offices, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice. The affected employees included software engineers, technical support engineers, incident commanders, product management directors, and staff in marketing and sustainability leadership.
Salesforce also recently signed an agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research and human simulation platform. The company said the acquisition would expand its customer and user insights capabilities, complementing Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and its broader AI portfolio.