CRM giant Salesforce is starting the year with a huge job cull, with reports suggesting that more than 1,000 of its workers will be looking for a new employer in 2025.
While that would amount to more than one percent of the company’s total workforce, Salesforce is simultaneously beefing up its teams that are working on AI-related projects.
Layoffs in the tech industry have been a common sight over the last 12 months, with similar announcements already being made in January from the likes of Meta and Microsoft.
More Than 1,000 Affected in Salesforce Job Cuts
News of the Salesforce layoffs was first reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), which acquired the information from an anonymous “person familiar with the matter”. No confirmation from the company has yet been forthcoming.
It says that that more than 1,000 employees will be impacted, but that those affected people will be given the opportunity to apply for open roles within Salesforce. The source was not able to verify from which divisions of the company the job cuts would be made.
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Bloomberg notes that Salesforce is at the same time hiring new staff “to sell new artificial intelligence products”, while TechRadar reported in December that it intended to hire 2,000 new sales representatives.
And a search of the company’s careers website, shows hundreds of open roles – 408 globally, including 121 in the US alone – featuring ‘artificial intelligence’ as a keyword. They include Research Scientist in AI Research, Finance AI Architect, Machine Learning Engineer and Senior Technical AI Ethicist.
Salesforce and AI
Salesforce has made no secret of the fact that it sees AI as a key proponent of progress – it has long been adding layers of artificial intelligence to its enterprise tools (e.g. Einstein Copilot Studio), while CEO Marc Benioff is a prominent voice on the potential and dangers of AI’s growing use.
Having already rolled out a raft of AI tools for its Slack workplace communication platform, the company made a huge play in October when it released Agentforce to the market. The chatbot seeks to bring greater levels of automation to customer service operations of Salesforce’s clients.
Describing Agentforce’s release as “ushering in a new era of AI abundance and limitless workforces”, Salesforce was at pains to justify it as a means to “augment their employees” and “expand their workforce”. Unfortunately, it seems that philosophy doesn’t extend to tranches of its own staff.
2025: Another Year of Job Cuts?
Our catalog of major tech companies making layoffs amounted to more than 50 in 2024, with names such as Apple, eBay and PayPal all included on the list.
And, only one month in to the new year, there’s no sense of the the job losses slowing down in 2025.
Microsoft has already confirmed two waves of redundancies, adding to the 10,0000+ that it shed last year. While Mark Zuckerberg has warned that Meta layoffs are incoming, with plans to slash 5% of the company’s worldwide workforce.
