<a href="https://lightfield.app/">Lightfield</a>, a customer relationship management platform built entirely around artificial intelligence, officially launched to the public this week after a year of quiet development — a bold pivot by a startup that once had <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/04/23/the-prompt-the-latest-ai-startup-to-face-reality/">20 million users</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/02/22/storytelling-ai-startup-tome-raises-43-million/">$43 million in the bank</a> building something completely different.The San Francisco-based company is positioning itself as a fundamental reimagining of how businesses track and manage customer relationships, abandoning the manual data entry that has defined CRMs for decades in favor of a system that automatically captures, organizes, and acts on customer interactions. With more than 100 early customers already using the platform daily — over half spending more than an hour per day in the system — <a href="https://lightfield.app/">Lightfield</a> is a direct challenge to the legacy business models of <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> and <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a>, both of which generate billions in annual revenue.&quot;The CRM, categorically, is perhaps the most complex and lowest satisfaction piece of software on Earth,&quot; said Keith Peiris, Lightfield&#x27;s co-founder and CEO, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. &quot;CRM companies have tens of millions of users, and you&#x27;d be hard-pressed to find a single one who actually loves the product. That problem is our opportunity.&quot;The <a href="https://lightfield.app/">general availability</a> announcement marks an unusual inflection point in enterprise software: a company betting that large language models have advanced enough to replace structured databases as the foundation of business-critical systems. It&#x27;s a wager that has attracted backing from <a href="https://www.coatue.com/">Coatue Management</a>, which led the company&#x27;s Series A when it was still building presentation software under the name Tome.<h2>How Tome&#x27;s founders abandoned 20 million users to build a CRM from scratch</h2>The story behind Lightfield&#x27;s creation reflects both conviction and pragmatism. <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90827339/presentation-tool-tome-launches-ai-to-help-make-storytelling-simpler">Tome</a> had achieved significant viral success as an AI-powered presentation platform, gaining millions of users who appreciated its visual design and ease of use. But Peiris said the team concluded that building lasting differentiation in the general-purpose presentation market would prove difficult, even with a working product and real user traction.&quot;Tome went viral as an AI slides product, and it was visually delightful and easy to use—the first real generative AI-based presentation platform,&quot; Peiris explained. &quot;But, the more people used it, the more I realized that to really help people communicate something—anything—we needed more context.&quot;That realization led to a fundamental rethinking. The team observed that the most effective communication requires deep understanding of relationships, company dynamics, and ongoing conversations — context that exists most richly in sales and customer-facing roles. Rather than building a horizontal tool for everyone, they decided to build vertically for go-to-market teams.&quot;We chose this lane, &#x27;sales,&#x27; because so many people in these roles used Tome, and it seemed like the most logical place to go vertical,&quot; Peiris said. The team reduced headcount to a core group of engineers and spent a year building in stealth.<a href="https://signal.nfx.com/investors/dan-rose">Dan Rose</a>, a senior advisor at <a href="https://www.coatue.com/">Coatue</a> who led the original investment in Tome, said the pivot validated his conviction in the founding team. &quot;It takes real guts to pivot, and even more so when the original product is working,&quot; Rose said. &quot;They shrunk the team down to a core group of engineers and got to work building Lightfield. This was not an easy product to build, it is extremely complex under the hood.&quot;<h2>Why Lightfield stores complete conversations instead of forcing data into fields</h2>What distinguishes <a href="https://lightfield.app/">Lightfield</a> from traditional CRMs is architectural, not cosmetic. While <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a>, <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a>, and their competitors require users to define rigid data schemas upfront — dropdown menus, custom fields, checkbox categories — and then manually populate those fields after every interaction, Lightfield stores the complete, unstructured record of what customers actually say and do.&quot;Traditional CRMs force every interaction through predefined fields — they&#x27;re compressing rich, nuanced customer conversations into structured database entries,&quot; Peiris said. &quot;We store customer data in its raw, lossless form. That means we&#x27;re capturing significantly more detail and context than a traditional CRM ever could.&quot;In practice, this means the system automatically records and transcribes sales calls, ingests emails, monitors product usage, and maintains what the company calls a &quot;relationship timeline&quot; — a complete chronological record of every touchpoint between a company and its customers. AI models then extract structured information from this raw data on demand, allowing companies to reorganize their data model without manual rework.&quot;If you realize you need different fields or want to reorganize your schema entirely, the system can remap and refill itself automatically,&quot; Peiris explained. &quot;You&#x27;re not locked into decisions you made on day one when you barely understood your sales process.&quot;The system also generates meeting preparation briefs, drafts follow-up emails based on conversation context, and can be queried in natural language — capabilities that represent a departure from the passive database model that has defined CRMs since the category&#x27;s inception in the 1980s.<h2>Sales teams report reviving dead deals and cutting response times from months to days</h2>Customer testimonials suggest the automation delivers measurable impact, particularly for small teams without dedicated sales operations staff. Tyler Postle, co-founder of <a href="http://voker.ai">Voker.ai</a>, said Lightfield&#x27;s AI agent helped him revive more than 40 stalled opportunities in a single two-hour session — leads he had neglected for six months while using HubSpot.&quot;Within 2 days, 10 of those were revived and became active opps that moved to poc,&quot; Postle said. &quot;The problem was, instead of being a tool of action and autotracking—HubSpot was a tool where I had to do the work to record customer convos. Using HubSpot I was a data hygienist. Using Lighfield, I’m a closer.&quot;Postle reported that his response times to prospects improved from weeks or months to one or two days, a change noticeable enough that customers commented on it. &quot;Our prospects and customers have even noticed it,&quot; he said.Radu Spineanu, co-founder of <a href="https://humbleops.ai/">Humble Ops</a>, highlighted a specific feature that addresses what he views as the primary cause of lost deals: simple neglect. &quot;The killer feature is asking &#x27;who haven&#x27;t I followed up with?&#x27;&quot; Spineanu said. &quot;Most deals die from neglect, not rejection. Lightfield catches these dropped threads and can draft and send the follow-up immediately. That&#x27;s prevented at least three deals from going cold this quarter.&quot;Spineanu had evaluated competing modern CRMs including <a href="https://attio.com/">Attio</a> and <a href="https://www.clay.com/">Clay</a> before selecting <a href="https://lightfield.app/">Lightfield</a>, dismissing <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> and <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a> as &quot;built for a different era.&quot; He said those platforms assume companies have dedicated operations teams to configure workflows and maintain data quality — resources most early-stage companies lack.<h2>Why Y Combinator startups are rejecting Salesforce and starting with AI-native tools</h2>Peiris claims that the current batch of <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/">Y Combinator</a> startups — widely viewed as a bellwether for early-stage company behavior — have largely rejected both <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> and <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a>. &quot;If you were to poll a random sampling of current YC startups and ask whether they&#x27;re using Salesforce or HubSpot, the overwhelming answer would be &#x27;no,&#x27;&quot; he said. &quot;Salesforce is too expensive, too complex to set up, and frankly doesn&#x27;t do enough to justify the investment for an early-stage company.&quot;According to Peiris, most startups begin with spreadsheets and eventually graduate to a first CRM — a transition point where Lightfield aims to intercede. &quot;Increasingly, they&#x27;re choosing Lightfield instead and skipping that intermediate step entirely,&quot; he said.This represents a familiar pattern in enterprise software disruption: a new generation of companies forming habits around different tools, creating an opening for challengers to establish themselves before businesses grow large enough to face pressure toward industry-standard platforms. The company&#x27;s strategy appears to deliberately target this window, aiming to grow alongside early customers and become embedded in their processes as they scale.<h2>Can Salesforce and HubSpot retrofit their legacy systems for AI, or is the architecture too old?</h2>Both <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> and <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a> have announced AI features in recent quarters, adding capabilities like conversation intelligence and automated data entry to their existing platforms. The question facing Lightfield is whether established vendors can incorporate similar capabilities—leveraging their existing customer bases and integrations — or whether fundamental architectural differences create a genuine moat.Peiris argues the latter. &quot;The fundamental difference is in how we store data,&quot; he said. &quot;Because we have access to that complete context, the analysis we provide and the work we generate tends to be substantially higher quality than tools built on top of traditional database structures.&quot;Existing conversation intelligence tools like <a href="https://www.gong.io/">Gong</a> and <a href="http://revenue.io">Revenue.io</a>, which analyze sales calls and provide coaching insights, already serve similar functions but require Salesforce instances to operate. Peiris said Lightfield&#x27;s advantage comes from unifying the entire data model rather than layering analysis on top of fragmented systems.&quot;We have a more complete picture of each customer because we integrate company knowledge, communication sync, product analytics, and full CRM detail all in one place,&quot; he said. &quot;That unified context means the work being generated in Lightfield—whether it&#x27;s analysis, follow-ups, or insights—tends to be significantly higher quality.&quot;<h2>The privacy and accuracy concerns that come with AI-automated customer interactions</h2>The architecture creates obvious risks. Storing complete conversation histories raises privacy concerns, and relying on large language models to extract and interpret information introduces the possibility of errors—what AI researchers call hallucinations.Peiris acknowledged both issues directly. On privacy, the company maintains that call recording follows standard practices, with visible notifications that recording is in progress, and that storing sales correspondence mirrors what CRM vendors have done for decades. The company has achieved SOC 2 Type I certification and is pursuing both SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance. &quot;We don&#x27;t train models on customer data, period,&quot; Peiris said.On accuracy, he was similarly forthright. &quot;Of course it happens,&quot; Peiris said when asked about misinterpretations. &quot;It&#x27;s impossible to completely eliminate hallucinations when working with large language models.&quot;The company&#x27;s approach is to require human approval before sending customer communications or updating critical fields — positioning the system as augmentation rather than full automation. &quot;We&#x27;re building a tool that amplifies human judgment, not one that pretends to replace it entirely,&quot; Peiris said.This is a more cautious stance than some AI-native software companies have taken, reflecting both technical realism about current model capabilities and potential liability concerns around customer-facing mistakes.<h2>How Lightfield plans to consolidate ten different sales tools into one platform</h2>Lightfield&#x27;s pricing strategy reflects a broader thesis about enterprise software economics. Rather than charging per-seat fees for a point solution, the company is positioning itself as a consolidated platform that can replace multiple specialized tools — sales engagement platforms, conversation intelligence systems, meeting assistants, and the CRM itself.&quot;The real problem is that running a modern go-to-market function requires cobbling together 10 different independent point solutions,&quot; Peiris said. &quot;When you pay for 10 separate seat licenses, you&#x27;re essentially paying 10 different companies to solve the same foundational problems over and over again.&quot;The company operates primarily through self-service signup rather than enterprise sales teams, which Peiris argues allows for lower pricing while maintaining margins. This is a common playbook among modern SaaS companies but represents a fundamental difference from Salesforce&#x27;s model, which relies heavily on direct sales and customer success teams.Whether this approach can support a sustainable business at scale remains unproven. The company&#x27;s current customer base skews heavily toward early-stage startups—more than 100 <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/">Y Combinator</a> companies, according to the company — a segment with limited budgets and high failure rates.But Lightfield is betting it can become the system of record for a cohort of fast-growing companies, eventually creating an installed base comparable to how Salesforce established itself decades ago. The company&#x27;s trajectory will likely depend on whether AI capabilities alone provide sufficient differentiation—or whether incumbents can adapt quickly enough to defend their positions.<h2>The real test: whether sales teams will trust AI enough to let it run their business</h2>The company has outlined several areas for expansion, including an open platform for workflows and webhooks that would allow third-party integrations. Early customers have specifically requested connections with tools like <a href="https://www.apollo.io/">Apollo</a> for prospecting and <a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a> for team communication — gaps that Postle, the <a href="http://voker.ai">Voker.ai</a> founder, acknowledged but dismissed as temporary.&quot;The fact that HS and Salesforce have these integrations already isn&#x27;t a moat,&quot; Postle said. &quot;HS and Salesforce are going to lose to lightfield because they aren&#x27;t AI native, no matter how much they try to pretend to be.&quot;Rose highlighted an unusual use case that emerged during Lightfield&#x27;s own development: the company&#x27;s product team used the CRM itself to analyze customer conversations and identify feature requests. &quot;In this sense, Lightfield more than just a sales database, it&#x27;s a customer intelligence layer,&quot; Rose said.This suggests potential applications beyond traditional sales workflows, positioning the system as infrastructure for any function that requires understanding customer needs—product development, customer success, even marketing strategy.For now, the company is focused on proving the core value proposition with early-stage companies. But the broader question Lightfield raises extends beyond CRM software specifically: whether AI capabilities have advanced sufficiently to replace structured databases as the foundation of enterprise systems, or whether the current generation of large language models remains too unreliable for business-critical functions.The answer will likely emerge not from technical benchmarks but from customer behavior—whether sales teams actually trust AI-generated insights enough to base decisions on them, and whether the efficiency gains justify the inherent unpredictability of working with systems that approximate rather than calculate.<a href="https://lightfield.app/">Lightfield</a> is betting that the trade-off has already shifted in favor of approximation, at least for the millions of salespeople who currently view their CRM as an obstacle rather than an asset. Whether that bet proves correct will help define the next generation of enterprise software.

تم إطلاق Lightfield، وهي منصة لإدارة علاقات العملاء تعتمد على الذكاء الاصطناعي، رسميًا بعد عام من التطوير. تم إنشاء المنصة من قبل مؤسسي Tome، الذين قاموا سابقًا ببناء تطبيق تقديمي شهير مع 20 مليون مستخدم، وتهدف المنصة إلى تحويل كيفية إدارة الشركات للتفاعلات مع العملاء من خلال أتمتة جمع البيانات وتنظيمها. مع وجود أكثر من 100 عميل مبكر يستخدمون المنصة بالفعل، تسعى Lightfield إلى إعادة تعريف ممارسات إدارة علاقات العملاء التي اعتمدت لعقود على إدخال البيانات اليدوي.

Lightfield, una plataforma de gestión de relaciones con clientes nativa de IA, se lanzó oficialmente después de un año de desarrollo. Creada por los fundadores de Tome, que anteriormente construyeron una aplicación de presentación viral con 20 millones de usuarios, la plataforma busca transformar la gestión de interacciones con clientes mediante la automatización de la captura y organización de datos. Con más de 100 primeros usuarios ya utilizando la plataforma, Lightfield pretende redefinir las prácticas de CRM que han dependido de la entrada manual de datos durante décadas.

Lightfield, une plateforme de gestion de la relation client native de l'IA, a été officiellement lancée après un an de développement. Créée par les fondateurs de Tome, qui avaient auparavant développé une application de présentation virale avec 20 millions d'utilisateurs, la plateforme vise à transformer la gestion des interactions clients en automatisant la capture et l'organisation des données. Avec plus de 100 premiers utilisateurs déjà actifs, Lightfield cherche à redéfinir les pratiques CRM qui reposent depuis longtemps sur la saisie manuelle des données.

Lightfield, an AI-native customer relationship management platform, has officially launched after a year of development. The platform, created by the founders of Tome, who previously built a viral presentation app with 20 million users, aims to transform how businesses manage customer interactions by automating data capture and organization. With over 100 early adopters already utilizing the platform, Lightfield seeks to redefine CRM practices that have long relied on manual data entry.

Tome's founders ditch viral presentation app with 20M users to build AI-native CRM Lightfield

Salesforce looks to bolster AI capabilities for Slack users with an upgraded Slackbot that uses Anthropic’s Claude model. Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer and interim CEO, joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Source: Bloomberg)

قامت Salesforce بتعزيز قدرات الذكاء الاصطناعي في Slack من خلال دمج Slackbot المحدث المدعوم من نموذج Claude الخاص بشركة Anthropic، كما أعلن Rob Seaman، رئيس منتج Slack والرئيس التنفيذي المؤقت، خلال ظهوره في Bloomberg Tech.

Salesforce ha mejorado las capacidades de IA de Slack al integrar un Slackbot actualizado impulsado por el modelo Claude de Anthropic, como anunció Rob Seaman, director de producto de Slack y CEO interino, durante una aparición en Bloomberg Tech.

Salesforce a amélioré les capacités d'IA de Slack en intégrant un Slackbot amélioré alimenté par le modèle Claude d'Anthropic, comme l'a annoncé Rob Seaman, directeur produit de Slack et PDG par intérim, lors d'une apparition sur Bloomberg Tech.

Salesforce has enhanced Slack's AI capabilities by integrating an upgraded Slackbot powered by Anthropic's Claude model, as announced by Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer and interim CEO, during an appearance on Bloomberg Tech.

Slack Adds New AI Capabilities

The bugs have been fixed, so users should patch now, experts warn.

تم تحديد وإصلاح ثغرات حديثة في مكتبات بايثون المستخدمة في أدوات الذكاء الاصطناعي وتعلم الآلة الرائدة، بما في ذلك تلك الخاصة بشركتي إنفيديا وسيلزفورس، مما دفع الخبراء إلى نصح المستخدمين بتطبيق التصحيحات على الفور للتخفيف من المخاطر.

Se han identificado y corregido vulnerabilidades recientes en bibliotecas de Python utilizadas por herramientas de IA y aprendizaje automático de primer nivel, incluidas las de Nvidia y Salesforce, lo que ha llevado a los expertos a aconsejar a los usuarios que implementen parches de inmediato para mitigar riesgos.

Des vulnérabilités récentes dans des bibliothèques Python utilisées par des outils d'IA et d'apprentissage automatique de premier plan, y compris ceux de Nvidia et Salesforce, ont été identifiées et corrigées, incitant les experts à conseiller aux utilisateurs de mettre en œuvre des correctifs immédiatement pour atténuer les risques.

Recent vulnerabilities in Python libraries utilized by leading AI and machine learning tools, including those from Nvidia and Salesforce, have been identified and fixed, prompting experts to advise users to implement patches immediately to mitigate risks.

Python libraries used in top AI and ML tools hacked - Nvidia, Salesforce and other libraries all at risk

<a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of <a href="https://slack.com/help/articles/202026038-An-introduction-to-Slackbot">Slackbot</a>, the company&#x27;s workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees.The new Slackbot, now generally available to <a href="https://slack.com/pricing/businessplus">Business+</a> and <a href="https://slack.com/enterprise">Enterprise+</a> customers, is Salesforce&#x27;s most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging &quot;agentic AI&quot; movement — where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products rather than render them obsolete.&quot;Slackbot isn&#x27;t just another copilot or AI assistant,&quot; said <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/company/parker-harris-bio/">Parker Harris</a>, Salesforce co-founder and Slack&#x27;s chief technology officer, in an exclusive interview with Salesforce. &quot;It&#x27;s the front door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce.&quot;<h2>From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the ground up</h2>Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the new Slackbot from its predecessor: &quot;The old Slackbot was, you know, a little tricycle, and the new Slackbot is like, you know, a Porsche.&quot;The original Slackbot, which has existed since Slack&#x27;s early days, performed basic algorithmic tasks — reminding users to add colleagues to documents, suggesting channel archives, and delivering simple notifications. The new version runs on an entirely different architecture built around a large language model and sophisticated search capabilities that can access Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendar data, and years of Slack conversations.&quot;It&#x27;s two different things,&quot; Harris explained. &quot;The old Slackbot was algorithmic and fairly simple. The new Slackbot is brand new — it&#x27;s based around an LLM and a very robust search engine, and connections to third-party search engines, third-party enterprise data.&quot;Salesforce chose to retain the Slackbot brand despite the fundamental technical overhaul. &quot;People know what Slackbot is, and so we wanted to carry that forward,&quot; Harris said.<h2>Why Anthropic&#x27;s Claude powers the new Slackbot — and which AI models could come next</h2>The new Slackbot runs on <a href="https://claude.ai/">Claude</a>, Anthropic&#x27;s large language model, a choice driven partly by compliance requirements. Slack&#x27;s commercial service operates under <a href="https://www.fedramp.gov/archive/2017-11-16-understanding-baselines-and-impact-levels/">FedRAMP Moderate certification</a> to serve U.S. federal government customers, and Harris said Anthropic was &quot;the only provider that could give us a compliant LLM&quot; when Slack began building the new system.But that exclusivity won&#x27;t last. &quot;We are, this year, going to support additional providers,&quot; Harris said. &quot;We have a great relationship with Google. Gemini is incredible — performance is great, cost is great. So we&#x27;re going to use Gemini for some things.&quot; He added that OpenAI remains a possibility as well.Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff&#x27;s view that large language models are becoming commoditized: &quot;You&#x27;ve heard Marc talk about LLMs are commodities, that they&#x27;re democratized. I call them CPUs.&quot;On the sensitive question of training data, Harris was unequivocal: Salesforce does not train any models on customer data. &quot;Models don&#x27;t have any sort of security,&quot; he explained. &quot;If we trained it on some confidential conversation that you and I have, I don&#x27;t want Carolyn to know — if I train it into the LLM, there is no way for me to say you get to see the answer, but Carolyn doesn&#x27;t.&quot;<h2>Inside Salesforce&#x27;s internal experiment: 80,000 employees tested Slackbot with striking results</h2>Salesforce has been <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/797890/slack-slackbot-ai-assistant-upgrade">testing the new Slackbot internally for months</a>, rolling it out to all 80,000 employees. According to Ryan Gavin, Slack&#x27;s chief marketing officer, the results have been striking: &quot;It&#x27;s the fastest adopted product in Salesforce history.&quot;Internal data shows that two-thirds of Salesforce employees have tried the new Slackbot, with 80% of those users continuing to use it regularly. Internal satisfaction rates reached 96% — the highest for any AI feature Slack has shipped. Employees report saving between two and 20 hours per week.The adoption happened largely organically. &quot;I think it was about five days, and a Canvas was developed by our employees called &#x27;The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,&#x27;&quot; Gavin said. &quot;People just started adding to it organically. I think it&#x27;s up to 250-plus prompts that are in this Canvas right now.&quot;Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, found that 73% of internal adoption was driven by social sharing rather than top-down mandates. &quot;Everybody is there to help each other learn and communicate hacks,&quot; she said.<h2>How Slackbot transforms scattered enterprise data into executive-ready insights</h2>During a product demonstration, Amy Bauer, Slack&#x27;s product experience designer, showed how Slackbot can synthesize information across multiple sources. In one example, she asked Slackbot to analyze customer feedback from a pilot program, upload an image of a usage dashboard, and have Slackbot correlate the qualitative and quantitative data.&quot;This is where Slackbot really earns its keep for me,&quot; Bauer explained. &quot;What it&#x27;s doing is not just simply reading the image — it&#x27;s actually looking at the image and comparing it to the insight it just generated for me.&quot;Slackbot can then query Salesforce to find enterprise accounts with open deals that might be good candidates for early access, creating what Bauer called &quot;a really great justification and plan to move forward.&quot; Finally, it can synthesize all that information into a Canvas — Slack&#x27;s collaborative document format — and find calendar availability among stakeholders to schedule a review meeting.&quot;Up until this point, we have been working in a one-to-one capacity with Slackbot,&quot; Bauer said. &quot;But one of the benefits that I can do now is take this insight and have it generate this into a Canvas, a shared workspace where I can iterate on it, refine it with Slackbot, or share it out with my team.&quot;Rob Seaman, Slack&#x27;s chief product officer, said the Canvas creation demonstrates where the product is heading: &quot;This is making a tool call internally to Slack Canvas to actually write, effectively, a shared document. But it signals where we&#x27;re going with Slackbot — we&#x27;re eventually going to be adding in additional third-party tool calls.&quot;<h2>MrBeast&#x27;s company became a Slackbot guinea pig—and employees say they&#x27;re saving 90 minutes a day</h2>Among Salesforce&#x27;s pilot customers is <a href="https://www.thecashmerefund.com/portfolio-company/beast-industries">Beast Industries</a>, the parent company of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the company&#x27;s chief information officer, joined the launch announcement to describe his experience.&quot;As somebody who has rolled out enterprise technologies for over two decades now, this was practically one of the easiest,&quot; Madrigal said. &quot;The plumbing is there. Slack as an implementation, Enterprise Tools — being able to turn on the Slackbot and the Slack AI functionality was as simple as having my team go in, review, do a quick security review.&quot;Madrigal said his security team signed off &quot;rather quickly&quot; — unusual for enterprise AI deployments — because Slackbot accesses only the information each individual user already has permission to view. &quot;Given all the guardrails you guys have put into place for Slackbot to be unique and customized to only the information that each individual user has, only the conversations and the Slack rooms and Slack channels that they&#x27;re part of—that made my security team sign off rather quickly.&quot;One Beast Industries employee, Sinan, the head of Beast Games marketing, reported saving &quot;at bare minimum, 90 minutes a day.&quot; Another employee, Spencer, a creative supervisor, described it as &quot;an assistant who&#x27;s paying attention when I&#x27;m not.&quot;Other pilot customers include Slalom, reMarkable, Xero, Mercari, and Engine. Mollie Bodensteiner, SVP of Operations at Engine, called Slackbot &quot;an absolute &#x27;chaos tamer&#x27; for our team,&quot; estimating it saves her about 30 minutes daily &quot;just by eliminating context switching.&quot;<h2>Slackbot vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Google Gemini: The fight for enterprise AI dominance</h2>The launch puts Salesforce in direct competition with <a href="https://copilot.microsoft.com/">Microsoft&#x27;s Copilot</a>, which is integrated into Teams and the broader Microsoft 365 suite, as well as Google&#x27;s Gemini integrations across Workspace. When asked what distinguishes Slackbot from these alternatives, Seaman pointed to context and convenience.&quot;The thing that makes it most powerful for our customers and users is the proximity — it&#x27;s just right there in your Slack,&quot; Seaman said. &quot;There&#x27;s a tremendous convenience affordance that&#x27;s naturally built into it.&quot;The deeper advantage, executives argue, is that Slackbot already understands users&#x27; work without requiring setup or training. &quot;Most AI tools sound the same no matter who is using them,&quot; the company&#x27;s announcement stated. &quot;They lack context, miss nuance, and force you to jump between tools to get anything done.&quot;Harris put it more directly: &quot;If you&#x27;ve ever had that magic experience with AI — I think ChatGPT is a great example, it&#x27;s a great experience from a consumer perspective — Slackbot is really what we&#x27;re doing in the enterprise, to be this employee super agent that is loved, just like people love using Slack.&quot;Amy Bauer emphasized the frictionless nature of the experience. &quot;Slackbot is inherently grounded in the context, in the data that you have in Slack,&quot; she said. &quot;So as you continue working in Slack, Slackbot gets better because it&#x27;s grounded in the work that you&#x27;re doing there. There is no setup. There is no configuration for those end users.&quot;<h2>Salesforce&#x27;s ambitious plan to make Slackbot the one &#x27;super agent&#x27; that controls all the others</h2>Salesforce positions Slackbot as what Harris calls a &quot;super agent&quot; — a central hub that can eventually coordinate with other AI agents across an organization.&quot;Every corporation is going to have an employee super agent,&quot; Harris said. &quot;Slackbot is essentially taking the magic of what Slack does. We think that Slackbot, and we&#x27;re really excited about it, is going to be that.&quot;The vision extends to third-party agents already launching in Slack. Last month, Anthropic released a preview of Claude Code for Slack, allowing developers to interact with Claude&#x27;s coding capabilities directly in chat threads. OpenAI, Google, Vercel, and others have also built agents for the platform.&quot;Most of the net-new apps that are being deployed to Slack are agents,&quot; Seaman noted during the press conference. &quot;This is proof of the promise of humans and agents coexisting and working together in Slack to solve problems.&quot;Harris described a future where Slackbot becomes an <a href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/learn/client-concepts">MCP (Model Context Protocol) client</a>, able to leverage tools from across the software ecosystem — similar to how the developer tool Cursor works. &quot;Slack can be an MCP client, and Slackbot will be the hub of that, leveraging all these tools out in the world, some of which will be these amazing agents,&quot; he said.But Harris also cautioned against over-promising on multi-agent coordination. &quot;I still think we&#x27;re in the single agent world,&quot; he said. &quot;FY26 is going to be the year where we started to see more coordination. But we&#x27;re going to do it with customer success in mind, and not demonstrate and talk about, like, &#x27;I&#x27;ve got 1,000 agents working together,&#x27; because I think that&#x27;s unrealistic.&quot;<h2>Slackbot costs nothing extra, but Salesforce&#x27;s data access fees could squeeze some customers</h2>Slackbot is included at no additional cost for customers on <a href="https://slack.com/pricing/businessplus">Business+</a> and <a href="https://slack.com/enterprise">Enterprise+</a> plans. &quot;There&#x27;s no additional fees customers have to do,&quot; Gavin confirmed. &quot;If they&#x27;re on one of those plans, they&#x27;re going to get Slackbot.&quot;However, some enterprise customers may face other cost pressures related to Salesforce&#x27;s broader data strategy. CIOs may see price increases for third-party applications that work with Salesforce data, as effects of higher charges for API access ripple through the software supply chain.Fivetran CEO George Fraser has warned that Salesforce&#x27;s shift in pricing policy for API access could have tangible consequences for enterprises relying on Salesforce as a system of record. &quot;They might not be able to use Fivetran to replicate their data to Snowflake and instead have to use Salesforce Data Cloud. Or they might find that they are not able to interact with their data via ChatGPT, and instead have to use Agentforce,&quot; Fraser said in a <a href="https://www.cio.com/article/4108001/salesforce-is-tightening-control-of-its-data-ecosystem-and-cios-may-have-to-pay-the-price.html">recent CIO report</a>.Salesforce has framed the pricing change as standard industry practice.<h2>What Slackbot can do today, what&#x27;s coming in weeks, and what&#x27;s still on the roadmap</h2>The new Slackbot begins rolling out today and will reach all eligible customers by the end of February. Mobile availability will complete by March 3, Bauer confirmed during her interview with VentureBeat.Some capabilities remain works in progress. Calendar reading and availability checking are available at launch, but the ability to actually book meetings is &quot;coming a few weeks after,&quot; according to Seaman. Image generation is not currently supported, though Bauer said it&#x27;s &quot;something that we are looking at in the future.&quot;When asked about integration with competing CRM systems like <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a> and <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365">Microsoft Dynamics</a>, Salesforce representatives declined to provide specifics during the interview, though they acknowledged the question touched on key competitive differentiators.<h2>Salesforce is betting the future of work looks like a chat window—and it&#x27;s not alone</h2>The Slackbot launch is Salesforce&#x27;s bet that the future of enterprise work is conversational — that employees will increasingly prefer to interact with AI through natural language rather than navigating traditional software interfaces.Harris described Slack&#x27;s product philosophy using principles like &quot;don&#x27;t make me think&quot; and &quot;be a great host.&quot; The goal, he said, is for Slackbot to surface information proactively rather than requiring users to hunt for it.&quot;One of the revelations for me is LLMs applied to unstructured information are incredible,&quot; Harris said. &quot;And the amount of value you have if you&#x27;re a Slack user, if your corporation uses Slack — the amount of value in Slack is unbelievable. Because you&#x27;re talking about work, you&#x27;re sharing documents, you&#x27;re making decisions, but you can&#x27;t as a human go through that and really get the same value that an LLM can do.&quot;Looking ahead, Harris expects the interfaces themselves to evolve beyond pure conversation. &quot;We&#x27;re kind of saturating what we can do with purely conversational UIs,&quot; he said. &quot;I think we&#x27;ll start to see agents building an interface that best suits your intent, as opposed to trying to surface something within a conversational interface that matches your intent.&quot;Microsoft, Google, and a growing roster of AI startups are placing similar bets — that the winning enterprise AI will be the one embedded in the tools workers already use, not another application to learn. The race to become that invisible layer of workplace intelligence is now fully underway.For Salesforce, the stakes extend beyond a single product launch. After a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/can-salesforce-stock-recover-here-s-what-wall-street-thinks-crm-earnings-11862399">bruising year</a> on Wall Street and persistent questions about whether AI threatens its core business, the company is wagering that Slackbot can prove the opposite — that the tens of millions of people already chatting in Slack every day is not a vulnerability, but an unassailable advantage.Haley Gault, the Salesforce account executive in Pittsburgh who stumbled upon the new Slackbot on a snowy morning, captured the shift in a single sentence: &quot;I honestly can&#x27;t imagine working for another company not having access to these types of tools. This is just how I work now.&quot;That&#x27;s precisely what Salesforce is counting on.

أطلقت Salesforce نسخة معاد تصميمها بالكامل من Slackbot، محولة إياه إلى وكيل ذكاء اصطناعي كامل القدرة يمكنه البحث في بيانات المؤسسات، وصياغة الوثائق، وتنفيذ المهام نيابة عن الموظفين. هذه النسخة الجديدة متاحة لعملاء Business+ وEnterprise+، مما يمثل تحولًا كبيرًا في كيفية مساعدة الذكاء الاصطناعي في مكان العمل للمستخدمين.

Salesforce ha lanzado una versión completamente rediseñada de su Slackbot, transformándolo en un agente de IA completamente funcional capaz de buscar datos empresariales, redactar documentos y ejecutar tareas en nombre de los empleados. Esta nueva versión está disponible para clientes de Business+ y Enterprise+, marcando un cambio significativo en la forma en que la IA en el lugar de trabajo puede asistir a los usuarios.

Salesforce a lancé une version entièrement repensée de son Slackbot, le transformant en un agent IA entièrement opérationnel capable de rechercher des données d'entreprise, de rédiger des documents et d'exécuter des tâches pour les employés. Cette nouvelle version est disponible pour les clients Business+ et Enterprise+, marquant un changement significatif dans la manière dont l'IA au travail peut assister les utilisateurs.

Salesforce has launched a completely redesigned version of its Slackbot, transforming it into a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and executing tasks for employees. This new version is available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, marking a significant shift in how workplace AI can assist users.

Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI

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