Salesforce (CRM) Restructures for AI Push – 1,000 Cuts, Thousands of New Hires

We recently published a list of 8 AI Stocks Sending Shockwaves on Wall Street Following DeepSeek Scare. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stands against other AI stocks sending shockwaves on Wall Street following DeepSeek scare.

The pace of artificial intelligence development and deployment is “pretty terrifying”. That’s the sentiment echoed by Steven Adler, a former safety researcher at OpenAI. The remarks come amid growing concerns that robust AI systems capable of evading human control could come into being with catastrophic consequences.

Amid the safety concerns raised, tech giants and emerging startups are not showing signs of slowing down on AI spending. They are allocating billions of dollars on capital expenditures to accelerate the development of powerful AI systems. Bloomberg expects capital expenditures in the development of various AI solutions to exceed $200 billion in 2025, representing a $90 billion increase from last year.

Higher capital expenditure should result in new innovations resulting in the widespread use of AI in many industries. Similarly, AI is predicted to transform various sectors, including healthcare, retail, finance, and the automotive industry.

Nevertheless, billionaire investor Steve Cohen believes AI’s transformational shift could take decades to realize. “This is a 10- to 20-year theme. It’s going to affect everybody in how they conduct their lives, how they do their business,” Cohen said. “We’re still in the first, second inning of something that’s going to be transformational for the economy and the world. … It is such a dramatic, important shift that to ignore it, I think it’s a mistake.”

The CEO and chairman of hedge fund Point72 maintains that there may be ups and downs in the AI boom and that the volatility surrounding investments related to AI may worsen due to a lack of reliable information. However, the increasing need for cutting-edge AI technologies like deep learning and robotics may present difficulties for hardware parts like AI chips. That’s because the high processing demands of AI algorithms and machine learning models are beyond the capabilities of conventional CPUs and GPUs. Top tech firms must increase their expenditures and production to overcome these obstacles.

Because AI applications like generative AI and large language models require massive data processing, energy efficiency is another issue. Potential remedies include quantum computing and high bandwidth memory, but each has drawbacks. Amid the ever-growing energy needs needed to power AI models and infrastructure, former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has urged President Donald Trump to take the threat of tariffs off the table definitively. According to Freeland, the US needs Canadian energy to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence. Freeland insists the US should thank Canada for being “a great partner” that can provide the much-needed power to dominate the AI space.

Our Methodology

For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Salesforce (CRM) Restructures for AI Push - 1,000 Cuts, Thousands of New Hires

A customer service team in an office setting using the company’s Customer 360 platform to communicate with customers.

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 116

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a customer relationship management heavyweight that has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence as it looks to strengthen its growth metrics. On February 3rd, Bloomberg reported that the company is in the process of cutting 1,000 roles as part of a reorganization that seeks to enhance focus on artificial intelligence ambitions.

Amid the proposed cuts, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) also plans to hire thousands of sales personnel and assign them the responsibility of selling its AI agent products. The hiring spree comes on Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff confirming that Salesforce has closed more than 1,000 paid deals for its AI-powered platform Agentforce. Salesforce has actively promoted the technology and has hailed its AI agents as the next big sales driver in the upcoming quarters.

Overall, CRM ranks 2nd on our list of AI stocks sending shockwaves on Wall Street following DeepSeek scare. While we acknowledge the growth potential of CRM, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CRM but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.