Salesforce's stock (CRM) declined 2% on Tuesday as the company kicked off its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The shares came under additional pressure on Wednesday after a widespread service outage left customers unable to access parts of its cloud software suite.
Outage disrupts Dreamforce
The outage occurred on the second day of Dreamforce, Salesforce's flagship technology event. According to the company's status page, the incident began at approximately 7:50 a.m. UTC (3:50 a.m. Eastern). Salesforce reported that customers across all three of its operating regions, primarily in the US, could experience severe delays, intermittent errors, or an inability to access some services.
Salesforce's engineering team identified a fix and, by 6:56 a.m. Eastern, had tested it in a controlled environment and verified it resolved the issue. The company said it was deploying the fix across all regions, as reported by Barron's.
The timing of the outage put the incident in the spotlight, as Dreamforce hosts thousands of customers and industry participants. Since its inception in 2003, the conference has become one of Salesforce's key commercial and marketing events.
AI push takes center stage
The outage comes as Salesforce continues to expand its focus on artificial intelligence. The company recently announced a partnership with Anthropic to integrate Salesforce customer data and workflows into Anthropic's Claude chatbot through a new plugin aimed at sales teams. That announcement accompanied Salesforce's fiscal second-quarter results, which showed revenue of $11.35 billion, an 11% increase year-over-year, and a $200 million raise in full-year revenue guidance.
At Dreamforce, Salesforce unveiled AIforce, a software interface layer designed to bring its data, workflows, and AI agents into Anthropic's Claude, Slack, and other workplace tools. The company also introduced Koa, built on Nvidia's open-source Nemotron AI model technology, which Salesforce said was trained using decades of customer relationship management data.
Analysts see progress in AI strategy
Despite the service disruption, analysts highlighted Salesforce's AI product developments at Dreamforce. Stifel analyst J. Parker Lane said the company delivered a compelling vision for AIforce during its keynote, noting that the capabilities were available for customers to try, contrasting with previous years when some demonstrations were not yet production-ready.
Truist Securities reiterated a Buy rating and a $300 price target on Salesforce shares following the conference. Analyst Terry Tillman attended Dreamforce and reported an incrementally positive view of Salesforce's product story and its development of agentic AI.
The developments come as Salesforce seeks to position its cloud software platform around AI-powered workflows and agents. The latest outage highlights the importance of service availability as customers increasingly rely on its cloud-based products. For more on Salesforce's recent AI partnership and earnings, see this analysis. Additionally, the broader software sector's AI-driven momentum is reflected in ServiceNow's recent gains.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
