Bank of America Upgrades Salesforce to Buy, Sharply Raises Price Target!

Bank of America has upgraded Salesforce to Buy and raised its price target from $160 to $285, approximately 20% above the current share price. Investors’ main concern had previously been that advances in artificial intelligence could pose a substitution threat to software companies such as Salesforce. However, following discussions with several chief information officers and other market participants, Bank of America believes large enterprises are unlikely to abandon platforms that underpin their core business logic, data assets, workflows, and compliance frameworks.

Artificial intelligence will only deepen enterprises’ reliance on these platforms. Salesforce offers one of the most comprehensive solutions in the market for enterprise AI applications. Currently, Salesforce’s AI-related revenue remains limited, and the main near-term risk is that AI adoption progresses more slowly than expected. However, the value of newly signed contracts is growing strongly, while Slack’s business performance continues to accelerate. The data layer establishes a governed context environment; the application layer, including Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, provides business logic and workflow support; the intelligent agent layer, centered on Agentforce, delivers reasoning and orchestration capabilities; and Slack, together with Claudeforce powered by Anthropic’s technology, enables natural-language interaction.

Bank of America has raised its forecasts for Salesforce’s subscription and support revenue growth in fiscal years 2028 and 2029 to 10.4% and 10.5%, respectively.
Salesforce announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Israeli AI analytics startup Loops for approximately $30 million, with the transaction expected to close in early November. Salesforce plans to integrate Loops’ AI-driven analytics capabilities into its Tableau product to help enterprise customers identify performance drivers more precisely. The acquisition further strengthens the company’s overall Agentforce strategy. Agentforce’s annual recurring revenue has surpassed $1.5 billion, growing more than 240% year on year, providing strong support for Bank of America’s revised view that artificial intelligence is an accelerator of Salesforce’s business model rather than a threat.

Market Insight:
The reversal in the institution’s rating, an acquisition that strengthens its AI capabilities, and figures showing accelerating Agentforce growth together provide three positive catalysts, giving investors ample reason to reassess Salesforce’s valuation. After a year of skepticism and hesitation, the market is increasingly willing to assign a higher premium to Salesforce’s strategic positioning in artificial intelligence, and today’s price action clearly reflects this shift.