'We are the last CEOs who are only going to be managing humans as our workforce'

Salesforce CEO weighs in on AI's transformative impact in workplaces

'We are the last CEOs who are only going to be managing humans as our workforce'

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said that this is the last group of chief executive officers who are going to be managing humans in the workforce amid the rising investment in artificial intelligence.

Benioff made the remarks during a panel with other leaders at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025.

"We are the last CEOs who are only going to be managing humans as our workforce," he said during the event.

"From this point forward… we will be managing not only human workers but also digital workers. And that is just incredible."

Growing investment in AI

Benioff's remarks came amid a growing investment in generative AI from organisations across the world following its rapid development over the past few years.

Findings from Accenture's latest report revealed that 86% of organisations worldwide feel prepared to increase their investment in gen AI this year.

In fact, 60% of them are expecting gen AI solutions to be scaled across their organisation, up from 36% in 2024.

The integration of AI in workplaces is already present even in the recent WEF Annual Meeting.

Benioff said Salesforce has run all the information management for Davos for over a decade, and this year it introduced an AI agent on the Davos app to be a partner's of the participants.

"What it does is it goes back, and it looks at every session you've ever attended because all of that is recorded as you badge through the conference and every session that is available," Benioff said during the annual meeting.

"And then that agent can say, ‘Yes, this is the thing you need to do in Davos to be really successful right now…’ It's delivering a 95% result for Davos attendees because it has access to so much data that has been collected here over so many years."

AI-related job fears

The rise in AI has been evident in workplaces, to the point where employees have growing fears that it could replace them at work - a fear that was recently validated by the WEF's latest Future of Jobs Survey.

According to the report, 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce where AI can replicate people's work.

Benioff’s remarks during the WEF Annual Meeting also hinted at this future.

"AI is kind of becoming our partner to help us to run our lives, run our businesses, to help us to deliver a new level of productivity without a human workforce," he said.

The WEF report, however, still noted that 77% of employers are planning on reskilling and upskilling their workforce to better work alongside AI. Another 47% are also planning to transition people whose jobs will be hit by AI to other roles in the organisation.