A heavyweight battle is brewing in the enterprise software market pitting Salesforce versus ServiceNow. That's the emerging view on Wall Street amid announcements at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference. Salesforce stock rose in early trading today.
The Salesforce Dreamforce conference started on Tuesday. The software maker hosts an investor day late Wednesday.
Aiming to boost the adoption of artificial intelligence products by enterprise customers, Salesforce has leaned into the 2021 acquisition of Slack Technologies. In addition, With the new Agentforce 360 platform, Salesforce customers will be able to use a conversational user interface to build and deploy AI agents.
"Slack has become an agentic OS (operating system," said Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff in his keynote address on Tuesday. In addition, new Slackbots will act as a personal AI companion for users, the software maker says.
Also, Salesforce announced an expanded partnership with OpenAI that brings Agentforce apps into ChatGPT.
RBC Capital analyst Rishi Jaluria in a report said Salesforce and ServiceNow are squaring off as they try to reaccelerate revenue growth.
"We attended Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco, where Salesforce evolved Customer 360 into Agentforce 360, establishing Al agents and contextual data as the new platform core," said Jaluria. "Salesforce is now positioning itself as the Al orchestration layer for the enterprise, which moves it into ServiceNow's automation and workflow territory. While Salesforce's narrative focused on trust, governance, and extensibility, we see competitive overlap intensifying as both vendors converge around workflow automation, data context, and Al agent deployment."
On the stock market today, Salesforce stock climbed nearly 1% to 241.51 in early trading. Shares fell 3.6% on Tuesday. Salesforce stock has retreated 27% in 2025 despite its push into "agentic" AI.
Autonomous Agents
Many software companies are focused on helping companies modernize their proprietary data to customize artificial intelligence applications. They're also developing autonomous, goal-driven "AI agents."
At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce introduced Agentforce Voice, which allows agents to communicate with customers via natural, humanlike conversations. Also, Salesforce unveiled Agentforce Vibes, which leverages coding agents to help users build apps in natural language.
Meanwhile, Salesforce on Oct. 9 announced the launch of Agentforce IT Service, an agentic IT service desk, and the acquisition of Apromore, a process intelligence vendor. Salesforce sees an opportunity to embed an ITSM tool within Slack, its workplace collaboration platform.
"The Agentforce IT Service and Apromore acquisition are both next steps in the growing overlap between ServiceNow and Salesforce," said Jefferies analyst Samad Samana in a report.
Salesforce Stock Technical Ratings
ServiceNow's software tracks and manages services provided by information-technology departments. ServiceNow recently has pushed into "front office" software (customer service, field service and supply chain management).
In a move to boost its artificial intelligence strategy, Salesforce recently agreed to buy data-management software maker Informatica in an all-cash deal valued at $8 billion.
Further, Salesforce stock is among AI stocks to watch.
Meanwhile, CRM stock owns a subpar Composite Rating of 61 out of a best-possible 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup.
Salesforce stock holds an Accumulation/Distribution Rating of D-plus. That rating analyzes price and volume changes in a stock over the past 13 weeks of trading. A+ signifies heavy institutional buying; E means heavy selling. Think of a C grade as neutral.
Follow Reinhardt Krause on X, formerly Twitter, @reinhardtk_tech for updates on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum computing and cloud computing.
