Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed on the All-In podcast that his company is projected to spend $300 million on Anthropic tokens in 2026, almost entirely for coding, in what would be one of the largest public AI infrastructure commitments by any enterprise software company. The figure would make Salesforce one of Anthropic's largest commercial accounts, though neither company has confirmed it in official disclosures.
Tokens are the units of text that AI models process when generating output, and Anthropic bills enterprise customers based on the volume consumed. The announcement comes after Salesforce froze software engineering hiring in January 2025, citing productivity gains of over 30% from AI tools including Agentforce. By mid-2025, Benioff said AI was handling between 30% and 50% of the company's overall workload.
What Marc Benioff Said on the All-In Podcast About Anthropic and Coding Agents
Benioff was direct about where his conviction sits: "These coding agents are awesome. Anthropic is awesome. I am going to probably use $300 million of Anthropic tokens this year at Salesforce. Coding. Everything's going to be cheaper to make."
He described the shift as unlike anything in his career: "I can do things that I just could not do before. I can go faster than ever before. I can implement my software and sell it at the same time. I've never been able to do that before."
Benioff called Anthropic "a rocket ship that will not stop" and said its focus on coding agents proved correct while other AI developers spread resources across video, consumer companions, and advertising products.
He also confirmed that Salesforce is building coding tools inside Slack, the workplace platform the company has owned since 2021. "We're even working on technology inside Slack to make it easier for everybody to code," he said. "You're going to see some cool stuff with Slack and code I'm not ready to talk about yet. But there's no question that we are in a new moment in coding."
On cost management, Benioff said not every token should go to a frontier model. He called for an "intermediary layer" that routes simpler tasks to cheaper models and reserves Claude for harder reasoning work.
What Marc Benioff's $300 Million Anthropic Spend Means for Salesforce's Engineers
Benioff said the company's approximately 15,000 engineers are not being eliminated. They are working alongside AI tools including Anthropic's models, OpenAI Codex, and Cursor, supervising AI-generated coding workflows rather than writing every line themselves.
Last year, Benioff announced that AI agents had enabled Salesforce to reduce its support workforce from 9,000 to 5,000. Agentforce, Salesforce's dedicated AI agent product line, has since reached $800 million in annual recurring revenue, up 169% year on year with 29,000 deals closed.
Salesforce has previously invested more than $300 million in Anthropic and holds approximately a 1% stake in the company. While engineering hiring remains paused, Salesforce has confirmed plans to hire between 1,000 and 2,000 salespeople to help customers adopt its AI products.
David Adubiina
