Salesforce on Tuesday launched a wholly rebuilt model of Slackbot, the corporate's office assistant, remodeling it from a easy notification software into what executives describe as a completely powered AI agent able to looking out enterprise knowledge, drafting paperwork, and taking motion on behalf of workers.
The brand new Slackbot, now usually obtainable to Enterprise+ and Enterprise+ clients, is Salesforce's most aggressive transfer but to place Slack on the middle of the rising "agentic AI" motion — the place software program brokers work alongside people to finish complicated duties. The launch comes as Salesforce makes an attempt to persuade buyers that synthetic intelligence will bolster its merchandise somewhat than render them out of date.
"Slackbot isn't simply one other copilot or AI assistant," mentioned Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack's chief expertise officer, in an unique interview with Salesforce. "It's the entrance door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce."
From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the bottom up
Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the brand new Slackbot from its predecessor: "The outdated Slackbot was, you already know, a bit tricycle, and the brand new Slackbot is like, you already know, a Porsche."
The unique Slackbot, which has existed since Slack's early days, carried out fundamental algorithmic duties — reminding customers so as to add colleagues to paperwork, suggesting channel archives, and delivering easy notifications. The brand new model runs on a wholly totally different structure constructed round a big language mannequin and complicated search capabilities that may entry Salesforce information, Google Drive information, calendar knowledge, and years of Slack conversations.
"It's two various things," Harris defined. "The outdated Slackbot was algorithmic and pretty easy. The brand new Slackbot is model new — it's based mostly round an LLM and a really strong search engine, and connections to third-party engines like google, third-party enterprise knowledge."
Salesforce selected to retain the Slackbot model regardless of the basic technical overhaul. "Individuals know what Slackbot is, and so we needed to hold that ahead," Harris mentioned.
Why Anthropic's Claude powers the brand new Slackbot — and which AI fashions may come subsequent
The brand new Slackbot runs on Claude, Anthropic's massive language mannequin, a selection pushed partly by compliance necessities. Slack's industrial service operates below FedRAMP Reasonable certification to serve U.S. federal authorities clients, and Harris mentioned Anthropic was "the one supplier that might give us a compliant LLM" when Slack started constructing the brand new system.
However that exclusivity gained't final. "We’re, this 12 months, going to help further suppliers," Harris mentioned. "We’ve an excellent relationship with Google. Gemini is unimaginable — efficiency is nice, value is nice. So we're going to make use of Gemini for some issues." He added that OpenAI stays a risk as effectively.
Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's view that giant language fashions have gotten commoditized: "You've heard Marc discuss LLMs are commodities, that they're democratized. I name them CPUs."
On the delicate query of coaching knowledge, Harris was unequivocal: Salesforce doesn’t practice any fashions on buyer knowledge. "Fashions don't have any kind of safety," he defined. "If we educated it on some confidential dialog that you just and I’ve, I don't need Carolyn to know — if I practice it into the LLM, there isn’t any approach for me to say you get to see the reply, however Carolyn doesn't."
Inside Salesforce's inside experiment: 80,000 workers examined Slackbot with putting outcomes
Salesforce has been testing the brand new Slackbot internally for months, rolling it out to all 80,000 workers. In response to Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief advertising and marketing officer, the outcomes have been putting: "It's the quickest adopted product in Salesforce historical past."
Inner knowledge exhibits that two-thirds of Salesforce workers have tried the brand new Slackbot, with 80% of these customers persevering with to make use of it recurrently. Inner satisfaction charges reached 96% — the very best for any AI characteristic Slack has shipped. Staff report saving between two and 20 hours per week.
The adoption occurred largely organically. "I feel it was about 5 days, and a Canvas was developed by our workers referred to as 'The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,'" Gavin mentioned. "Individuals simply began including to it organically. I feel it's as much as 250-plus prompts which might be on this Canvas proper now."
Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, discovered that 73% of inside adoption was pushed by social sharing somewhat than top-down mandates. "Everyone is there to assist one another study and talk hacks," she mentioned.
How Slackbot transforms scattered enterprise knowledge into executive-ready insights
Throughout a product demonstration, Amy Bauer, Slack's product expertise designer, confirmed how Slackbot can synthesize data throughout a number of sources. In a single instance, she requested Slackbot to investigate buyer suggestions from a pilot program, add a picture of a utilization dashboard, and have Slackbot correlate the qualitative and quantitative knowledge.
"That is the place Slackbot actually earns its hold for me," Bauer defined. "What it's doing is not only merely studying the picture — it's truly trying on the picture and evaluating it to the perception it simply generated for me."
Slackbot can then question Salesforce to seek out enterprise accounts with open offers that is perhaps good candidates for early entry, creating what Bauer referred to as "a very nice justification and plan to maneuver ahead." Lastly, it will possibly synthesize all that data right into a Canvas — Slack's collaborative doc format — and discover calendar availability amongst stakeholders to schedule a assessment assembly.
"Up till this level, we’ve got been working in a one-to-one capability with Slackbot," Bauer mentioned. "However one of many advantages that I can do now could be take this perception and have it generate this right into a Canvas, a shared workspace the place I can iterate on it, refine it with Slackbot, or share it out with my workforce."
Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer, mentioned the Canvas creation demonstrates the place the product is heading: "That is making a software name internally to Slack Canvas to really write, successfully, a shared doc. Nevertheless it alerts the place we're going with Slackbot — we're ultimately going to be including in further third-party software calls."
MrBeast's firm grew to become a Slackbot guinea pig—and workers say they're saving 90 minutes a day
Amongst Salesforce's pilot clients is Beast Industries, the father or mother firm of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the corporate's chief data officer, joined the launch announcement to explain his expertise.
"As any individual who has rolled out enterprise applied sciences for over 20 years now, this was virtually one of many best," Madrigal mentioned. "The plumbing is there. Slack as an implementation, Enterprise Instruments — having the ability to activate the Slackbot and the Slack AI performance was so simple as having my workforce go in, assessment, do a fast safety assessment."
Madrigal mentioned his safety workforce signed off "somewhat rapidly" — uncommon for enterprise AI deployments — as a result of Slackbot accesses solely the knowledge every particular person consumer already has permission to view. "Given all of the guardrails you guys have put into place for Slackbot to be distinctive and customised to solely the knowledge that every particular person consumer has, solely the conversations and the Slack rooms and Slack channels that they're a part of—that made my safety workforce log out somewhat rapidly."
One Beast Industries worker, Sinan, the pinnacle of Beast Video games advertising and marketing, reported saving "at naked minimal, 90 minutes a day." One other worker, Spencer, a artistic supervisor, described it as "an assistant who's paying consideration once I'm not."
Different pilot clients embrace Slalom, reMarkable, Xero, Mercari, and Engine. Mollie Bodensteiner, SVP of Operations at Engine, referred to as Slackbot "an absolute 'chaos tamer' for our workforce," estimating it saves her about half-hour every day "simply by eliminating context switching."
Slackbot vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Google Gemini: The battle for enterprise AI dominance
The launch places Salesforce in direct competitors with Microsoft's Copilot, which is built-in into Groups and the broader Microsoft 365 suite, in addition to Google's Gemini integrations throughout Workspace. When requested what distinguishes Slackbot from these options, Seaman pointed to context and comfort.
"The factor that makes it strongest for our clients and customers is the proximity — it's excellent there in your Slack," Seaman mentioned. "There's an incredible comfort affordance that's naturally constructed into it."
The deeper benefit, executives argue, is that Slackbot already understands customers' work with out requiring setup or coaching. "Most AI instruments sound the identical regardless of who’s utilizing them," the corporate's announcement acknowledged. "They lack context, miss nuance, and drive you to leap between instruments to get something completed."
Harris put it extra straight: "If you happen to've ever had that magic expertise with AI — I feel ChatGPT is a good instance, it's an excellent expertise from a shopper perspective — Slackbot is de facto what we're doing within the enterprise, to be this worker tremendous agent that’s liked, similar to folks love utilizing Slack."
Amy Bauer emphasised the frictionless nature of the expertise. "Slackbot is inherently grounded within the context, within the knowledge that you’ve got in Slack," she mentioned. "In order you proceed working in Slack, Slackbot will get higher as a result of it's grounded within the work that you just're doing there. There isn’t a setup. There isn’t a configuration for these finish customers."
Salesforce's bold plan to make Slackbot the one 'tremendous agent' that controls all of the others
Salesforce positions Slackbot as what Harris calls a "tremendous agent" — a central hub that may ultimately coordinate with different AI brokers throughout a company.
"Each company goes to have an worker tremendous agent," Harris mentioned. "Slackbot is actually taking the magic of what Slack does. We predict that Slackbot, and we're actually enthusiastic about it, goes to be that."
The imaginative and prescient extends to third-party brokers already launching in Slack. Final month, Anthropic launched a preview of Claude Code for Slack, permitting builders to work together with Claude's coding capabilities straight in chat threads. OpenAI, Google, Vercel, and others have additionally constructed brokers for the platform.
"Many of the net-new apps which might be being deployed to Slack are brokers," Seaman famous in the course of the press convention. "That is proof of the promise of people and brokers coexisting and dealing collectively in Slack to unravel issues."
Harris described a future the place Slackbot turns into an MCP (Mannequin Context Protocol) shopper, in a position to leverage instruments from throughout the software program ecosystem — much like how the developer software Cursor works. "Slack may be an MCP shopper, and Slackbot would be the hub of that, leveraging all these instruments out on this planet, a few of which will likely be these wonderful brokers," he mentioned.
However Harris additionally cautioned towards over-promising on multi-agent coordination. "I nonetheless suppose we're within the single agent world," he mentioned. "FY26 goes to be the 12 months the place we began to see extra coordination. However we're going to do it with buyer success in thoughts, and never exhibit and discuss, like, 'I've bought 1,000 brokers working collectively,' as a result of I feel that's unrealistic."
Slackbot prices nothing further, however Salesforce's knowledge entry charges may squeeze some clients
Slackbot is included at no further value for purchasers on Enterprise+ and Enterprise+ plans. "There's no further charges clients must do," Gavin confirmed. "In the event that they're on a kind of plans, they're going to get Slackbot."
Nonetheless, some enterprise clients might face different value pressures associated to Salesforce's broader knowledge technique. CIOs may even see value will increase for third-party purposes that work with Salesforce knowledge, as results of upper costs for API entry ripple by means of the software program provide chain.
Fivetran CEO George Fraser has warned that Salesforce's shift in pricing coverage for API entry may have tangible penalties for enterprises counting on Salesforce as a system of document. "They won’t be capable to use Fivetran to duplicate their knowledge to Snowflake and as a substitute have to make use of Salesforce Knowledge Cloud. Or they may discover that they aren’t in a position to work together with their knowledge through ChatGPT, and as a substitute have to make use of Agentforce," Fraser mentioned in a current CIO report.
Salesforce has framed the pricing change as customary business follow.
What Slackbot can do right this moment, what's coming in weeks, and what's nonetheless on the roadmap
The brand new Slackbot begins rolling out right this moment and can attain all eligible clients by the top of February. Cell availability will full by March 3, Bauer confirmed throughout her interview with VentureBeat.
Some capabilities stay works in progress. Calendar studying and availability checking can be found at launch, however the potential to really ebook conferences is "coming just a few weeks after," in accordance with Seaman. Picture era shouldn’t be presently supported, although Bauer mentioned it's "one thing that we’re sooner or later."
When requested about integration with competing CRM techniques like HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce representatives declined to offer specifics in the course of the interview, although they acknowledged the query touched on key aggressive differentiators.
Salesforce is betting the way forward for work seems like a chat window—and it's not alone
The Slackbot launch is Salesforce's guess that the way forward for enterprise work is conversational — that workers will more and more choose to work together with AI by means of pure language somewhat than navigating conventional software program interfaces.
Harris described Slack's product philosophy utilizing rules like "don't make me suppose" and "be an excellent host." The objective, he mentioned, is for Slackbot to floor data proactively somewhat than requiring customers to hunt for it.
"One of many revelations for me is LLMs utilized to unstructured data are unimaginable," Harris mentioned. "And the quantity of worth you’ve in case you're a Slack consumer, in case your company makes use of Slack — the quantity of worth in Slack is unbelievable. Since you're speaking about work, you're sharing paperwork, you're making choices, however you’ll be able to't as a human undergo that and actually get the identical worth that an LLM can do."
Wanting forward, Harris expects the interfaces themselves to evolve past pure dialog. "We're type of saturating what we are able to do with purely conversational UIs," he mentioned. "I feel we'll begin to see brokers constructing an interface that most accurately fits your intent, versus attempting to floor one thing inside a conversational interface that matches your intent."
Microsoft, Google, and a rising roster of AI startups are putting related bets — that the profitable enterprise AI would be the one embedded within the instruments employees already use, not one other software to study. The race to turn into that invisible layer of office intelligence is now totally underway.
For Salesforce, the stakes lengthen past a single product launch. After a bruising 12 months on Wall Avenue and chronic questions on whether or not AI threatens its core enterprise, the corporate is wagering that Slackbot can show the alternative — that the tens of thousands and thousands of individuals already chatting in Slack on daily basis shouldn’t be a vulnerability, however an unassailable benefit.
Haley Gault, the Salesforce account govt in Pittsburgh who stumbled upon the brand new Slackbot on a snowy morning, captured the shift in a single sentence: "I truthfully can't think about working for one more firm not accessing all these instruments. That is simply how I work now."
That's exactly what Salesforce is relying on.
