Salesforce laying off 262 employees in San Francisco after CEO praises AI

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Salesforce is laying off hundreds of workers from its San Francisco headquarters, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice processed on Tuesday. The filing comes days after CEO Marc Benioff trumpeted the use of artificial intelligence, enabling him to cut thousands of customer support jobs.

According to the notice, Salesforce will permanently lay off 262 employees from Salesforce Tower, located at 415 Mission Street. Positions affected are described in the state filing as “professional scientific and technical services.” The layoffs will be effective Nov. 3.

A Salesforce spokesperson told KRON4 in a statement, “We continuously assess our structure and rebalance as needed to best serve our customers and fuel growth areas.”

Benioff had recently joined The Logan Bartlett Show, where he touted the use of AI agents to replace 4,000 workers in Salesforce’s customer support division.

“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads,” Benioff said on the show Friday.

According to Benioff, the use of AI agents has allowed Salesforce to call back around 10,000 leads a week.

“There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people,” Benioff said. “But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us.”

Following Benioff’s comments, a Salesforce spokesperson told KRON4 that hundreds of impacted employees had been moved to other areas in the company.

Salesforce is the largest private employer in San Francisco.