Salesforce shares jumped more than 20 percent on Thursday, putting the stock on track for its second-best session on record behind only the 26 percent rally of August 2020. The move came after the company reported second-quarter results that topped estimates and unveiled an expanded partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, a combination that calmed a sector-wide panic about the durability of the software-as-a-service model.
The numbers behind the move
Revenue reached $11.35 billion, edging past the $11.32 billion consensus and rising 11 percent from a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $5.90, well above the $3.27 forecast. Net income nearly doubled to $3.53 billion, or $4.29 a share, from $1.89 billion, or $1.96 a share, in the same quarter last year. A $2.6 billion gain on the company’s strategic stake in Anthropic, now valued at $965 billion ahead of its anticipated initial public offering, padded the bottom line.
The AI partnership that changed the narrative
Chief executive Marc Benioff and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei appeared on CNBC to introduce “Claudeforce,” a plug-in that surfaces Salesforce data inside Anthropic’s Claude chatbot for sales teams. The announcement reframed the AI conversation from existential threat to distribution channel. Benioff dismissed the “SaaSpocalypse” narrative directly on the earnings call, noting that two quarters of dire predictions about models eating the software layer have yet to materialize for his business.
A sector-wide repricing
The rally spread beyond Salesforce. Adobe, Palantir, ServiceNow, Autodesk and Figma all advanced, lifting the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF roughly 5 percent. Software stocks had been under pressure this year on fears that generative AI would disrupt the recurring-revenue model. Thursday’s price action suggests the market is reconsidering whether the incumbents are more likely to absorb the technology than be displaced by it.
What to watch next
Anthropic’s path to a public listing at a near-trillion-dollar valuation will test whether the strategic investment continues to generate paper gains or becomes a liquidity event. For Salesforce, the next quarter will show whether the Claude integration translates into measurable pipeline acceleration or remains a demonstration project. The broader software group now trades on the assumption that AI is a feature, not a predator, a bet that will be stress-tested with every new model release.