The Hidden Flywheel That Could Reignite Salesforce Stock

While the market frets about lagging indicators, a powerful link between AI usage and customer spending is quietly taking shape.

Let’s be direct: Salesforce (CRM) stock has been a tough own. After a long reign as a market darling, it’s been lagging badly, trading about 36% below its 52-week high while the broader market has climbed. The question on your mind is simple: from this lower base, what on earth could possibly drive it materially higher?

The answer lies beyond a generic bet on artificial intelligence, rooted instead in a specific, evidenced connection between staggering AI adoption and actual customer dollars, a flywheel that’s just beginning to spin.

A Tsunami Of Tokens

First, understand the scale of what’s happening under the hood. In the last quarter alone, Salesforce processed 28.6 trillion tokens for its customers. That figure was up 152% from the prior quarter. This isn’t a slow ramp; it’s an explosion in usage. The company is translating that raw intelligence into what it calls “Agentic work units,” which themselves jumped 111% quarter-over-quarter to 3.8 billion.

More than mere vanity metrics, they represent a fundamental shift in how customers are using the platform. But usage alone doesn’t move a stock. Spending does.

From Clicks To Bigger Checks

Here is the crucial link that many are missing. According to the company, its top 10 customers, measured by that AI work unit usage, have increased their total Salesforce spend by 1.5x in the last year. This suggests that deep engagement with the new AI tools is more than a nice-to-have, leading directly to significantly larger financial commitments.

This isn’t a theoretical future. The Agentforce business, which was an approximately $800 million business just one quarter ago, now has an annual revenue run-rate greater than $1 billion. That’s a tangible leap in a single quarter, fueled by customers putting real money behind the AI hype.

The Market’s Two-Sided View

So if the AI engine is firing so hot, why the skepticism? Because, as analysts on the company’s latest call pointed out, the broader financial metrics haven’t caught up yet. Key leading indicators like remaining performance obligation haven’t meaningfully beaten guidance for two straight quarters, and management has noted softness in areas like Tableau and Commerce. It feels, as one analyst put it, “like the bookings trends are lagging a little bit.”

This is the heart of the debate. Is the explosive, monetizable growth in AI strong enough to pull the entire company into a higher gear, or will weakness in other areas create too much drag?

What To Watch Next

Management has put a clear stake in the ground, telling investors to expect “organic revenue re-acceleration in the second half of FY 27.” The specific driver they’ve pointed to is whether “net new AOV growth” continues “to outpace AOV growth.” That’s the metric to watch. If that trend holds through the first half of the year, it would be the strongest signal yet that the AI flywheel has moved beyond simply spinning and is beginning to lift the entire machine.

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