Salesforce on Tuesday launched a completely rebuilt model of Slackbot, the corporate's office assistant, remodeling it from a easy notification instrument into what executives describe as a completely powered AI agent able to looking enterprise knowledge, drafting paperwork, and taking motion on behalf of staff.
The brand new Slackbot, now usually accessible to Enterprise+ and Enterprise+ prospects, is Salesforce's most aggressive transfer but to place Slack on the heart of the rising "agentic AI" motion — the place software program brokers work alongside people to finish advanced duties. The launch comes as Salesforce makes an attempt to persuade traders that synthetic intelligence will bolster its merchandise quite than render them out of date.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Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the brand new Slackbot from its predecessor: "The outdated Slackbot was, you recognize, just a little tricycle, and the brand new Slackbot is like, you recognize, a Porsche."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 completely completely different structure constructed round a big language mannequin and complex search capabilities that may entry Salesforce data, Google Drive recordsdata, 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 "The outdated Slackbot was algorithmic and pretty easy.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 search engines like google and yahoo, 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 wished 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 alternative pushed partly by compliance necessities. Slack's industrial service operates below FedRAMP Average certification to serve U.S. federal authorities prospects, and Harris mentioned Anthropic was "the one supplier that would 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 extra suppliers," Harris mentioned. "We’ve a terrific 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 chance as nicely.
Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's view that enormous language fashions have gotten commoditized: "You've heard Marc speak about 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 type of safety," he defined. "If we skilled 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 means for me to say you get to see the reply, however Carolyn doesn't."
Inside Salesforce's inner experiment: 80,000 staff examined Slackbot with placing outcomes
Salesforce has been testing the brand new Slackbot internally for months, rolling it out to all 80,000 staff. Based on Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief advertising officer, the outcomes have been placing: "It's the quickest adopted product in Salesforce historical past."
Inside knowledge exhibits that two-thirds of Salesforce staff have tried the brand new Slackbot, with 80% of these customers persevering with to make use of it frequently. Inside satisfaction charges reached 96% — the best for any AI function Slack has shipped. Staff report saving between two and 20 hours per week.
The adoption occurred largely organically. "I believe it was about 5 days, and a Canvas was developed by our staff referred to as 'The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,'" Gavin mentioned. "Individuals simply began including to it organically. I believe it's as much as 250-plus prompts which are on this Canvas proper now."
Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, discovered that 73% of inner adoption was pushed by social sharing quite than top-down mandates. "All people 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 info throughout a number of sources. In a single instance, she requested Slackbot to research 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 maintain for me," Bauer defined. "What it's doing isn’t just merely studying the picture — it's really 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 likely to be good candidates for early entry, creating what Bauer referred to as "a very nice justification and plan to maneuver ahead." Lastly, it could synthesize all that info right into a Canvas — Slack's collaborative doc format — and discover calendar availability amongst stakeholders to schedule a evaluate assembly.
"Up till this level, we’ve been working in a one-to-one capability with Slackbot," Bauer mentioned. "However one of many advantages that I can do now’s 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 instrument name internally to Slack Canvas to truly write, successfully, a shared doc. But it surely alerts the place we're going with Slackbot — we're finally going to be including in extra third-party instrument calls."
MrBeast's firm turned a Slackbot guinea pig—and staff say they're saving 90 minutes a day
Amongst Salesforce's pilot prospects is Beast Industries, the father or mother firm of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the corporate's chief info officer, joined the launch announcement to explain his expertise.
"As any individual who has rolled out enterprise applied sciences for over twenty 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, evaluate, do a fast safety evaluate."
Madrigal mentioned his safety workforce signed off "quite shortly" — 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 quite shortly."
One Beast Industries worker, Sinan, the top of Beast Video games advertising, 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 prospects 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 day by day "simply by eliminating context switching."
Slackbot vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Google Gemini: The combat 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 prospects and customers is the proximity — it's excellent there in your Slack," Seaman mentioned. "There's an amazing 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 irrespective of who’s utilizing them," the corporate's announcement said. "They lack context, miss nuance, and pressure you to leap between instruments to get something executed."
Harris put it extra immediately: "In case you've ever had that magic expertise with AI — I believe ChatGPT is a good instance, it's a terrific expertise from a client perspective — Slackbot is absolutely what we're doing within the enterprise, to be this worker tremendous agent that’s cherished, identical to individuals 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 any setup. There isn’t any 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 finally coordinate with different AI brokers throughout a corporation.
"Each company goes to have an worker tremendous agent," Harris mentioned. "Slackbot is basically taking the magic of what Slack does. We expect 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 immediately in chat threads. OpenAI, Google, Vercel, and others have additionally constructed brokers for the platform.
"Many of the net-new apps which are being deployed to Slack are brokers," Seaman famous through the press convention. "That is proof of the promise of people and brokers coexisting and dealing collectively in Slack to resolve issues."
Harris described a future the place Slackbot turns into an MCP (Mannequin Context Protocol) consumer, capable of leverage instruments from throughout the software program ecosystem — just like how the developer instrument Cursor works. "Slack will be an MCP consumer, 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 in opposition to over-promising on multi-agent coordination. "I nonetheless assume 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 reveal and speak about, like, 'I've bought 1,000 brokers working collectively,' as a result of I believe that's unrealistic."
Slackbot prices nothing additional, however Salesforce's knowledge entry charges may squeeze some prospects
Slackbot is included at no extra value for patrons on Enterprise+ and Enterprise+ plans. "There's no extra charges prospects should do," Gavin confirmed. "In the event that they're on a kind of plans, they're going to get Slackbot."
Nonetheless, some enterprise prospects could face different value pressures associated to Salesforce's broader knowledge technique. CIOs might even see value will increase for third-party purposes that work with Salesforce knowledge, as results of upper fees for API entry ripple by 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 report. "They may not have the ability to use Fivetran to copy their knowledge to Snowflake and as an alternative have to make use of Salesforce Knowledge Cloud. Or they could discover that they don’t seem to be capable of work together with their knowledge through ChatGPT, and as an alternative have to make use of Agentforce," Fraser mentioned in a latest CIO report.
Salesforce has framed the pricing change as normal trade observe.
What Slackbot can do at this time, what's coming in weeks, and what's nonetheless on the roadmap
The brand new Slackbot begins rolling out at this time and can attain all eligible prospects by the tip of February. Cellular 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 skill to truly ebook conferences is "coming just a few weeks after," in accordance with Seaman. Picture technology is just not at the moment supported, although Bauer mentioned it's "one thing that we’re taking a look at sooner or later."
When requested about integration with competing CRM programs like HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce representatives declined to offer specifics through the interview, although they acknowledged the query touched on key aggressive differentiators.
Salesforce is betting the way forward for work appears 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 staff will more and more desire to work together with AI by pure language quite than navigating conventional software program interfaces.
Harris described Slack's product philosophy utilizing ideas like "don't make me assume" and "be a terrific host." The aim, he mentioned, is for Slackbot to floor info proactively quite than requiring customers to hunt for it.
"One of many revelations for me is LLMs utilized to unstructured info are unimaginable," Harris mentioned. "And the quantity of worth you might have if you happen to'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 possibly can't as a human undergo that and actually get the identical worth that an LLM can do."
Trying forward, Harris expects the interfaces themselves to evolve past pure dialog. "We're form of saturating what we will do with purely conversational UIs," he mentioned. "I believe we'll begin to see brokers constructing an interface that most closely 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 comparable bets — that the profitable enterprise AI would be the one embedded within the instruments employees already use, not one other utility to study. The race to turn out to be 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 protracted questions on whether or not AI threatens its core enterprise, the corporate is wagering that Slackbot can show the alternative — that the tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals already chatting in Slack daily is just not 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 actually can't think about working for an additional firm not getting access to a lot of these instruments. That is simply how I work now."
That's exactly what Salesforce is relying on.
[/gpt3]
