NEW YORK, April 9, 2026, 12:17 PM EDT
Salesforce shares slid toward a 52-week low on Thursday as a fresh selloff in software stocks gathered pace, even after the company posted record quarterly results in February and expanded its buyback. The stock was down about 4.1% at $169.15 around midday in New York after touching $167.17 earlier in the session, close to the bottom of its 52-week range. 1
That matters now because the move suggests investors are still not convinced that big software groups can turn their AI push into faster growth before the same technology starts eating into pricing power. For Salesforce, the debate cuts straight into the software-as-a-service model, or subscription software sold over the cloud, that once supported premium valuations. 2
The spark came from Anthropic, not Salesforce. Reuters reported that Anthropic limited wide access to its new Claude Mythos model after it uncovered thousands of cybersecurity flaws in major operating systems and browsers, reviving fears that fast-moving AI could expose weak points in legacy software; Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said the episode highlighted frailty in existing software, and the S&P 500 Software and Services Index is down nearly 26% this year, including Thursday’s slide. 3
That selling has buried what looked like a strong quarter. Salesforce said fourth-quarter revenue rose 12% to $11.2 billion, while Agentforce annual recurring revenue, a measure of subscription sales, reached $800 million; the company also authorized a new $50 billion share repurchase program and lifted its quarterly dividend, with Chief Executive Marc Benioff calling Salesforce the “operating system for the Agentic Enterprise.” 4
Investors focused instead on the outlook. In February, Salesforce forecast fiscal 2027 revenue of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion, a midpoint just below Wall Street estimates compiled by LSEG, and Rebecca Wettemann, chief executive of research firm Valoir, said the company still had to move AI agents “from pilots to production at scale” — meaning from early tests into routine use across customers. 2
A fresh peer readout has not helped. In a sales-software roundup published on Wednesday, StockStory said the group beat revenue estimates by 1.8% on average, but shares were down 3.8% since results; HubSpot posted the fastest growth in the peer set, while Salesforce delivered the weakest showing against analyst estimates and the softest full-year guidance update. 5
Still, Salesforce is not without defenses. Reuters reported last month that analysts see years of proprietary customer and sales-process data, plus high switching costs inside large companies, as meaningful barriers to new rivals; Ocean Park Asset Management’s James St. Aubin called proprietary data the “deepest moat by far,” while Workday has drawn more skepticism because much of its core HR and payroll data is easier to standardize and copy. 6
The risk is that both cases can be true at the same time. AI may open a new market for Agentforce and help Salesforce reaccelerate growth in the second half of fiscal 2027, as the company has projected, but the same tools can also make it cheaper to build substitutes and chip away at the old moat around enterprise software; for now, the market appears to be trading Salesforce less on its buyback and more as a test case for whether big software groups can hold their ground in the AI era. 2
