At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce announced a new partnership with NVIDIA.
The partnership will see the tech giants team up to infuse Salesforce Data Cloud and Agentforce with capabilities from the NVIDIA AI Enterprise platform.
Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, praised the link-up. He told CX Today: "I think partnerships like this are the future of tech.
No company can do AI alone, and success depends on ecosystems working together to optimize experience and cost.
Kerravala also suggests that the partnership between Salesforce and NVIDIA should accelerate CX innovation and the ability of the former to deliver turnkey solutions.
"This helps derisk deployments for [Saleforce] customers while delivering immediate value," he concluded. "We should expect to see more partnerships like this as AI matures."
On closer inspection, the partnership will drive that value in three specific ways.
1. AI Model Customization
Salesforce will leverage NVIDIA NIM microservices and NVIDIA NeMo – both available on the NVIDIA AI Enterprise platform - to customize the generative and predictive AI models across its platform.
As the CRM leader increasingly focuses its innovation on particular industries – with 100 sector-specific bots already on Agentforce – that model customization will become increasingly critical to the sustained accuracy and success of its Agents.
With such accuracy, Salesforce differentiates its Agentforce platform as – at Dreamforce – CEO Marc Benioff marketed its Agents as the "least hallucinogenic" GenAI-powered autonomous bots.
Maintaining that reputation is essential for Salesforce as it seeks to overcome the fear many CX teams have of implementing GenAI without a human in the loop.
For Salesforce to achieve its aim of deploying "billions" of these Agents "in the years to come", alleviating those fears and quickly delivering new Agentforce Agents is key.
That’s why NVIDIA’s robust reputation and ability to accelerate Salesforce’s innovation cycle may prove extremely significant.
2. Data Cloud Computing
NVIDIA will optimize computing resources and accelerate processing within the Data Cloud. That will allow Salesforce customers to connect their enterprise data more seamlessly and make it available for Agentforce Agents to act on.
The move continues Salesforce’s mission to bolster Data Cloud, as does its recent $1.9BN move for Own Company.
So, why is Salesforce investing so much in the customer data platform (CDP)? Because it pulls insight from external data warehouses and lakes to enrich Salesforce records. It also channels metadata across various enterprise teams.
In short, it’s the glue that binds the Salesforce Platform together.
As such, NVIDIA is not only powering Salesforce AI but also working in the background, helping run the data engine for those Agentforce Agents to fly.
3. Agentforce Avatars
Finally, Salesforce will develop AI Agent Avatars, utilizing NVIDIA NIM once again alongside NVIDIA ACE, its portfolio of digital human technologies.
Over time, these Avatars will augment specific Agentforce Agents that directly interact with employees and customers. In doing so, they may offer more human-like, engaging experiences, while delivering contextual guidance via voice and visuals.
Salesforce promises all this out-of-the-box and has already scoped out Agent Avatars for use cases such as sales feedback, employee training assistance, and live event management.
Consider that first example. An Agent Avatar may analyze a conversation in real-time, offering live suggestions to improve engagement. It may also recommend products, correct misstatements, and highlight key talking points in the moment.
After the interaction, the Avatar could even bring that feedback to life with a live demo to ensure the salesperson understands what they could do better next time.
