salesperson Chief Executive Marc Benioff said on Tuesday it would hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to customers, double the number the company planned to add a month ago.

The cloud software company for sales reps, marketers and customer service agents is one of many tech companies looking to boost revenue by generating artificial intelligence capabilities.

“We’re going to add thousands more salespeople to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We’ve already received 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions we’ve opened. That’s fantastic.”

Last month, Benioff told Bloomberg The company plans to hire 1,000 salespeople focused on artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, Salesforce said second generation Agentforce technology to create and operate artificial intelligence agents will be available to customers in February 2025. Agentforce will be able to solve complex problems in Salesforce’s Slack communications application based on all available data.

Nearly two years after announcing its launch, Salesforce is expanding its AI sales team dismiss More than 7,000 employees are more reflective of the economy. According to the data, as of January 31, 2024, the total number of employees was 72,682, a decrease of approximately 1% from two years ago. Filing.

Benioff said Salesforce’s homepage now features an experimental artificial intelligence agent that can respond to user queries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers who need help can access chat-based Help page 32,000 conversations are held every week. Benioff said that due to current AI capabilities, approximately 5,000 situations are being upgraded to humans, up from the previous number of 10,000.

Microsoft has been selling a range of artificial intelligence tools under the Copilot brand. But if you check Microsoft’s website to see how it automates customer support, Benioff said, “you won’t find it.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.