Salesforce CEO Admits AI Replaced 4,000 Workers: “I Need Less Heads”

Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce, just admitted what most tech leaders have been denying: he doesn’t need as many people anymore, because AI is cheaper.

Speaking on The Logan Bartlett Show podcast, Benioff revealed that Salesforce has slashed its customer service headcount from 9,000 people down to about 5,000. Why? Because his new AI system, Agentforce, now handles half of all customer conversations.

“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads,” Benioff said bluntly. “If we were having this conversation a year ago … you would be interacting with 9,000 people globally on our service cloud. Today, 50% are with agents, 50% are with humans.”

He doesn’t think it’s a dystopian future. “This is reality, at least for me,” he added.

Just months ago, Benioff was saying AI wouldn’t lead to layoffs, insisting the technology would augment workers instead. But now, Salesforce is touting a 17% reduction in support costs thanks to AI replacing humans.

The company admits it hasn’t been backfilling customer service roles, and while it claims to have “redeployed hundreds” of employees to other departments, the math is obvious: most of those 4,000 jobs are simply gone.

It’s a sharp reversal from the rhetoric Silicon Valley has been feeding workers since ChatGPT launched three years ago. CEOs from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg all reassured staffers that AI wouldn’t kill white-collar jobs. Now the pink slips are piling up.

Benioff isn’t the first tech boss to use AI as a headcount guillotine. Microsoft cut 15,000 roles this year, many in customer-facing jobs, despite raking in record profits. Klarna bragged that its AI agents now do the work of 700 support employees. Meta cut thousands in sales and engineering. Google axed roles across Android, Pixel, and Chrome.

The pattern is clear: AI efficiency is the new excuse for mass layoffs, even at companies still making billions.

Benioff has made it clear that customer support won’t be the last function on the chopping block. “I’m looking at every single function to see how it can become an agentic business,” he said. Translation: if AI can do it, expect more job cuts.

That might sound “exciting” to shareholders. But for workers, especially in sales and support, the message is brutal: AI isn’t just here to help you — it’s here to replace you.

For years, Silicon Valley sold the story that AI would make jobs better. Now, the CEOs who said that are using it to cut costs and cut people.

Benioff may call it reality. But for thousands of Salesforce employees, it’s unemployment.