Following a disappointing revenue forecast in its quarterly earnings report late Wednesday, Salesforce’s stock slumped 8%, bringing its decline for 2025 to 28%. That’s the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Revenue increased 10% in the fiscal second quarter from a year earlier, cracking double-digit growth for the first time since early 2024. Sales of $10.24 billion topped the average analyst estimate of $10.14 billion, and earnings per share also exceeded expectations.
However, for the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce said revenue will be $10.24 billion to $10.29 billion, while analysts were expecting $10.29 billion, according to LSEG.
Salesforce regularly touts its investments in artificial intelligence and the advancements in its software as a service, or SaaS, but the company hasn’t been lifted by the AI boom in the same way as many of its tech peers — particularly those focused on infrastructure.
There’s also a concern on Wall Street that AI is going to eat away at much of the software sector.
“While the investor community oozes angst over the future of SaaS, the here and now from Salesforce, while impressive at scale, is not enough to reshape the narrative,” wrote analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a report on Wednesday. The analysts have a buy rating on the stock.
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Salesforce is dealing with challenges selling marketing and commerce products, Robin Washington, the company’s president and chief operating and financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts.
In its earnings release, Salesforce said it closed over 12,500 total deals for Agentforce, which can automate the handling of customer service questions. That includes 6,000 paid deals. The company said that over 40% of bookings for Agentforce and its data cloud came from existing customers.
CEO Marc Benioff maintained his optimistic tone, downplaying concerns about the AI threat to software and telling analysts on the earnings call that “we are seeing one of the greatest transformations” in the space.
“To hear some of this nonsense that’s out there in social media or in other places, and people say the craziest things, but it’s not grounded in any customer truth,” Benioff said.
Salesforce kept its full-year revenue outlook but now sees higher earnings. The company is targeting $11.33 to $11.37 in adjusted earnings per share on $41.1 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue.
Waymo partners with Uber to bring robotaxi service to Atlanta and Austin.
Uber Technologies Inc.
Alphabet’sWaymo unit will begin test-driving robotaxis at its first California-based airport, the company said Thursday.
The autonomous car unit has been cleared to begin testing driverless rides at the San José Mineta International Airport in San Jose, California, this fall. Waymo said it plans to offer paid rides at the airport later this year.
“With San José at the epicenter of the biggest sporting events of 2026, Waymo is an ideal mode of transportation that will help visitors move around the area smoothly and safely,” San José Mayor Matt Mahan said in a release.
The vehicles will pick up passengers at the Ground Transportation Centers in Terminal A or B and roll out to locations in Waymo’s San Francisco Bay Area service area, according to the release.
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Once fully operational, it will be the second international airport where the company has service.
In 2023, Waymo launched at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which has become the most popular Waymo destination in its Phoenix metropolitan service area, a Waymo spokesperson said Thursday.
Waymo has continued to expand its driverless, ride-hailing service across the U.S. after already launching commercial operations in Austin, Texas, as well as Atlanta, San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
In March, Waymo expanded its service to include an additional 27 square miles of coverage around the San Francisco Bay Area, including Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Jose.
Bret Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of OpenAI, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 8, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Bret Taylor’s artificial intelligence startup Sierra has just joined an exclusive club: The company sports a new $10 billion valuation after raising $350 million in fresh capital.
Sierra is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines that are valued at or above $10 billion.
Investors are pouring money into this competitive group of companies in the hopes that they’ll eventually hit the public markets.
Taylor is the chairman of OpenAI’s board, and previously served as co-CEO of Salesforce alongside Marc Benioff. Taylor co-founded Sierra in 2023. The company builds and implements AI agents for customer service. AI agents can carry out tasks autonomously on behalf of their users.
Shares of Salesforce fell 5% Thursday after the company reported weak guidance and concerns lingered about how AI is affecting software companies.
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Sierra said its agents are already being used by “hundreds of millions of people” to help with tasks like refinancing homes, ordering lunch, delivering furniture, understanding insurance deductibles and fixing technology, among other things.
Greenoaks led Sierra’s latest funding round, the company said. Its valuation more than doubled from its most recent raise in October.
“We’re in this for the long term,” Sierra said in a blog post on Thursday.
The company said it will use its fresh funding to invest in its platform and focus on domestic and international expansion.
Sierra’s funding follows a flurry of other major AI raises in Silicon Valley. Earlier this week, Anthropic announced it had closed a $13 billion funding round at a $183 billion post-money valuation.
Broadcom is scheduled to report earnings for its fiscal third quarter after the close of regular trading on Thursday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to a consensus from LSEG.
Earnings per share: $1.65
Revenue: $15.83 billion
Broadcom, which develops custom chips for Google and other huge cloud companies and also makes networking gear needed to tie thousands of artificial intelligence chips together, is expected to report revenue growth of 21% from $13.07 billion a year ago.
Analysts project revenue growth will hold steady the rest of this year and accelerate a bit in 2026.
Broadcom has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI boom thanks largely to its accelerator chips, which the company calls XPUs. The processors are generally simpler and less expensive to operate than Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, and they’re designed to run specific AI programs efficiently.
Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote in a report last week that they expect to see increased signs of demand from Google and Meta.
“Additionally, all eyes will turn towards any visibility of current AI Custom Silicon engagements converting into customers with high-volume ramps in sight,” wrote the analysts, who recommend buying the stock.
The analysts estimate that custom silicon could generate $25 billion to $30 billion in revenue for Broadcom next year and more than $40 billion by around 2027. The company generated total revenue of $51.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.
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Shares of Broadcom are up 30% this year and have almost doubled in the past 12 months, lifting the company’s market cap to $1.4 trillion.
In the fiscal second quarter, AI revenue jumped 46% from a year earlier to more than $4.4 billion, with 40% from networking. CEO Hock Tan said that number should reach $5.1 billion in the third quarter, “as our hyperscale partners continue to invest.”
Some of Broadcom’s expansion has been fueled by acquisitions, most notably the purchase of server virtualization software vendor VMware for $61 billion in 2023. VMware is key to Broadcom’s infrastructure software business, which accounted for 44% of sales in the most recent quarter.