Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff insists he isn’t worried about a "SaaS-pocalypse.” In the company’s earnings call, Benioff pushed back against fears that AI will render business software obsolete, even as the company's revenue forecast rattled Wall Street.

Benioff pointed to Agentforce, Salesforce's AI tool that autonomously handles tasks like customer service, as proof that the business is evolving to meet the AI era.

“If there is a ‘SaaS-pocalypse’, it may be eaten by the ‘SaaS-quatch’ because there are a lot of companies using a lot of SaaS because it just got better with agents,” Benioff said. “Anthropic runs its whole operation on Salesforce and Slack. I think every AI company does.”

Salesforce's AI products now generate $2.9 billion in annual recurring revenue, doubling from the prior quarter. However, that figure still represents a small fraction of the company's overall business. Salesforce projected full-year revenue of $45.8–$46.2 billion, with a midpoint just shy of analyst expectations. But Benioff also said that demand for agentic AI, would drive fiscal 2030 revenue to a total $63 billion, above the $60 billion target Salesforce outlined at its October investor day, according to Barrons. 

And while it's not clear if Benioff's SaaS-quatch speech ultimately convinced any of the AI-spooked bears out there, Salesforce's announcement of $50 billion in additional buybacks went down as smoothly as some good old backwoods bourbon. Salesforce shares, which have been down roughly 30% this year, finished Thursday's regular session up 4%.—Beatrice Nolan

Instagram said Thursday it will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm. The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program.

The alerts will be sent via email, text or WhatsApp, depending on the parent’s contact information available, as well as a notification through the parent’s Instagram account. Meta said it is also working on similar notifications to parents about their kids’ interactions with artificial intelligence.

The announcement comes as Meta is in the midst of two trials over harms to children. A trial underway in Los Angeles questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm minors. Another, in New Mexico, seeks to determine whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its platforms.

“Our goal is to empower parents to step in if their teen’s searches suggest they may need support. We also want to avoid sending these notifications unnecessarily, which, if done too much, could make the notifications less useful overall,” Meta said in a blog post.—The Associated Press