Salesforce Beats Fiscal Q2 Expectations on AI Growth and Anthropic Investment Gain

Salesforce Inc. posted fiscal second-quarter revenue of $11.35 billion, marking an 11% increase year-over-year and exceeding Wall Street forecasts of $11.32 billion, according to earnings details first reported by Yahoo Finance and CNBC. Net income for the cloud enterprise software provider expanded to $3.53 billion from $1.89 billion during the same period last year, bolstered by a $2.6 billion gain tied to its investment in artificial intelligence developer Anthropic.

The company's shares jumped more than 12% following the market release and extended gains the next day after Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff and Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei announced "Claudeforce." The new integration allows corporate users to connect Salesforce customer databases directly into Anthropic's Claude AI models.

Addressing market anxiety surrounding potential AI disruption of standard enterprise software, Benioff rejected claims that software-as-a-service is facing a secular decline. "This SaaSpocalypse narrative has been such nonsense," Benioff told CNBC's Jim Cramer. "Frontier models depend on CRM. They don't replace it." He pointed to Agentforce, Salesforce's automated AI agent suite, which saw annualized revenue grow 240% year-over-year to top $1.5 billion.

The quarter showed operational momentum beyond headline figures. Net new annual order value rose at its fastest pace in four years. User seats grew across Agentforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Slack, while customer attrition held near historical lows and total bookings more than doubled from the preceding quarter.

Alongside the financial results, Salesforce revealed a $1.6 billion deal with the Department of Veterans Affairs and announced plans to acquire software provider Fin for $3.6 billion. The expanded integration with Anthropic offers enterprise clients direct access to premier large language models while allowing Salesforce to further monetize corporate AI deployment.

Despite the strong headline figures, non-operational accounting factors contributed substantially to bottom-line profitability. The $2.6 billion investment gain on Anthropic significantly elevated reported net income beyond standard operating revenue. Additionally, Salesforce completed a $25 billion accelerated share buyback financed through debt—part of a $50 billion authorization—which led management to lower its full-year cash flow growth forecast by roughly half.

Institutional ownership data compiled by Insider Monkey showed minor adjustments among hedge funds during the second quarter of 2026. The number of funds holding Salesforce equity dipped to 99 from 101 in the previous quarter, with aggregate position values falling from $6.87 billion to $6.44 billion. By comparison, enterprise peer ServiceNow saw holdings rise to 115 funds valued at $5.05 billion, while Workday was held by 57 funds with positions totaling $3.12 billion.