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Marc Benioff said that while artificial intelligence is drastically reshaping Salesforce, it doesn’t mean that it will wipe out white-collar workers.

“That isn’t how I see AI,” Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, told Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson during a recent onstage interview at the 2025 AI for Good Global Summit. “Maybe they have AI, I don’t have. But in the AI I have, it’s not going to be some huge mass layoff of white-collar workers, it is a radical augmentation of the workforce.”

Benioff’s broader view of AI contrasts with how other in tech view the next decade. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who was not mentioned directly during Benioff’s appearance, has said AI may eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next five years.

People need to get past this type of general “fear,” Benioff said.

“When I’m talking to our customers, I’m not hearing them say, “Oh, now I’m laying off these people because this A,B,C technology increase because of AI.’ So, I think we need to somehow shed the fear of what that all means.”

For his own company, Benioff says he’s paused Salesforce’s hiring of engineers, lawyers, and customer service agents for the year so the company can “let AI productivity really take hold.”

“Right now, for engineering organization, because of the incredible productivity opportunity, for AI in engineering this year, let’s take some time to actually incorporate that in so we’re not focused on hiring another thousand, 2,000, 3,000 engineers,” he said.

At the same time, Benioff said Salesforce is ramping up sales-related hires due to customer demand to deploy AI. That’s likely because, in his view, we’re on the edge of “a radical explosion in small and medium businesses.”

“You’re just going to see a lot more SMBs and a lot more general business and mid-market business, because their capabilities are radically amplified by the AI,” he said.