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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.

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Salesforce is ramping up partnerships with leaders in generative artificial intelligence as investors continue to fear that the software company faces business risks due to the rapid growth of AI.

Just ahead of its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Salesforce said Tuesday it will enable the use of AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic inside its Agentforce 360 software. A day earlier, Salesforce expanded Agentforce beyond text chats to also handle voice calls.

“The way people are going to interact with software is going to fundamentally shift,” said Brian Landsman, CEO of Salesforce’s AppExchange business and executive vice president of partnerships, in an interview. The interaction could be in ChatGPT or in Slack, he said.

Salesforce will collaborate with Anthropic to bring Agentforce 360 into Claude, Landsman added.

Shares of Salesforce are down about 26% this year, while the S&P 500 index has gained 13%, as Wall Street seeks faster revenue growth from the cloud software company. So far, Agentforce revenue has been “modest,” Morgan Stanley analysts, who have the equivalent of a buy rating on Salesforce, wrote in a Monday note.

Large software companies are increasingly turning to popular AI model developers for new capabilities. Atlassian, Datadog and Intuit have previously signed deals with OpenAI, and Microsoft has invested almost $14 billion in the company. In September, Databricks committed to spending $100 million on OpenAI models.

As part of Salesforce’s announcement, customers will be able to access corporate information in Agentforce 360 and create charts in Tableau through the ChatGPT assistant, which has more than 800 million weekly users. Last week OpenAI announced a software development kit for integrating third-party applications into ChatGPT.

Companies working with both OpenAI and Salesforce will be able to sell products through ChatGPT’s instant checkout feature later in 2025. Salesforce plans to work with Anthropic on selling products for regulated industries, starting with financial services.

OpenAI said last month that ChatGPT users would be able to purchase products from U.S. Etsy sellers and Shopify merchants.

Meanwhile, Salesforce said its engineering organization is adopting Anthropic’s Claude Code programming product.

“We plan to continue to go much deeper with these partners over time,” Landsman said.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been defending his company’s position in the AI boom. And on last month’s earnings call, he said Anthropic and OpenAI both use Salesforce tools.

“All these next-generation AI companies ranging from OpenAI to Anthropic to everyone are on Slack,” Benioff, who is also Salesforce’s co-founder, told analysts. “And it is incredible how they’ve used that as their operating system and as their platform to run their companies.”

WATCH: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer

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CNBC Daily Open: Don’t hit panic button on tech pullback just yet

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CNBC Daily Open: Don't hit panic button on tech pullback just yet

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on November 07, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

November is historically the best month for the S&P 500, which gains an average of 1.8% during the period, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.

A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.

“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, Tan Su Shan told CNBC.

Goldman Sachs’ CEO David Solomon also thinks choppy waters might be ahead.

“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.

After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.

— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. index were mixed. The Nasdaq Composite closed 0.21% lower Friday stateside, but U.S. futures rose Sunday evening. Asia-Pacific markets were up Monday, with South Korea’s Kospi popping more than 3% as of 2 p.m. Singapore time (1 a.m. ET).

China rolls back curbs on rare earths. Beijing said Friday that it would suspend some restrictions on exports of rare earth elements. The move follows talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Oct. 30.

Nexperia impasse shows signs of easing. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement Sunday that it had taken steps to allow exports of certain chips from Nexperia’s China facility. Shares of Nexperia parent Wingtech Technology climbed Monday.

U.S. government on track to end shutdown. The Senate on Sunday night stateside passed the first stage of a deal that would end the shutdown. The procedural measure allows other votes essential to the agreement to be held starting on Monday.

[PRO] Chinese sectors benefiting from AI. Earnings season in the country is underway, and while it’s spotlighting some AI-related sectors that have seen growth of up to 57%, others are facing a decline because of fierce price competition.

And finally…

Fluxfactory | E+ | Getty Images

A global wealth boom is fueling a rise in family office imposters

Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.

An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.

Lee Ying Shan

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China suspends some critical mineral export curbs to the U.S. as trade truce takes hold

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China suspends some critical mineral export curbs to the U.S. as trade truce takes hold

Crystals of gallium are seen in a laboratory at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology in Saxony, Germany on 13 September 2023.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

China has rolled back a number of restrictions on its export of critical minerals and rare earth materials to the United States, in a sign that a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies is holding.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it would suspend some export controls on critical minerals used in military hardware, semiconductors and other high-tech industries for a year.

The suspended restrictions, first imposed on Oct. 9, include limits on the export of certain rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies.

The export relaxations follow talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.

Beijing also reversed retaliatory curbs on exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other so-called super-hard materials such as synthetic diamonds and boron nitrides. Those measures, introduced in December 2024, were widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s expanded semiconductor export restrictions on China. 

China classifies such materials as “dual-use items,” meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Beyond military applications, these critical minerals are used across the semiconductor industry and other high-tech sectors — sectors at the heart of U.S.-China trade tensions.

Beijing has also suspended the stricter end-user and end-use verification checks for exports of dual-use graphite to the U.S., which were imposed in December 2024 alongside the broader export ban.

China dominates global production of most critical minerals and rare earth elements and has increasingly used its export policies as leverage in trade disputes. 

As part of the latest China-U.S. trade deal, the U.S. has agreed to several concessions, including lowering tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points, and suspending Trump’s heightened “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports until Nov. 10, 2026.

The U.S. will also postpone a rule announced Sept. 29 that would have blacklisted majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on its entity list.

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CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

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CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on November 07, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

November is historically the best month for the S&P 500, which gains an average of 1.8% during the period, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.

A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.

“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, Tan Su Shan told CNBC.

Goldman Sachs’ CEO David Solomon also thinks choppy waters might be ahead.

“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.

After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.

— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. index were mixed Friday stateside. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up more than 0.1%, but the Nasdaq Composite closed 0.21% lower. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.55%. U.S. futures rose Sunday evening stateside.

China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.

U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.

Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.

[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.

And finally…

Fluxfactory | E+ | Getty Images

A global wealth boom is fueling a rise in family office imposters

Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.

An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.

Lee Ying Shan

Continue Reading

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