Salesforce deploys new AI agents amid rising AI adoption

Salesforce has introduced new AI agents on its Agentforce platform, as businesses increasingly adopt the technology. These agents, unveiled at Dreamforce 2026, are designed to assist in sales, service, commerce, employee experience, and back office operations. The agents include Casey (help agent), Paige (IT and HR employee agent), Carter (shopper agent), Marshall (supply chain agent), Piper (inbound pipeline generation agent), Fin (customer agent), and Hunter (outbound sales agent).

Salesforce's approach to agentic AI involves starting with agents tailored for specific jobs, enhancing their capabilities, and continuously improving them as the business evolves. Linda Saunders, senior director of solution engineering for Africa at Salesforce, highlighted that the announcement is relevant to South African businesses as it provides a more practical path to integrating AI into daily operations.

Companies no longer need to create agents from scratch; they can start with pre-designed agents and connect them to existing Salesforce data and processes, which is particularly valuable for contact centers dealing with high call volumes and lengthy employee training periods. Salesforce has noted significant AI adoption within the CRM sector, and Saunders emphasized the need to evolve relationships within the ICT supply chain, moving away from traditional vendor-supplier models towards shared business value partnerships.

At the ITWeb Chartered CIO Conference 2026, IBM's VP of sales engineering and CTO, Sabine Holl, discussed the challenge of keeping up with AI technology while establishing governance, a concern that is growing as South African organizations accelerate AI integration. According to a study by IBM Institute for Business Value, 83% of South African CEOs are actively embedding AI across multiple workflows, and 67% have appointed a chief AI officer.

CyberArk's research indicates access to critical resources is a major concern for business leaders, with 56% of companies expressing this worry. Agentic AI is gaining traction, with venture capital funding increasing and markets moving towards a multi-agent model. AI agents are expected to serve as digital co-workers, with coding agents already reaching product-market fit, and fully-fledged AI employees anticipated within months, not years.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emphasized that AI is revolutionizing the interface by combining model intelligence with customer-built context in Salesforce, creating a secure, governed, and context-rich system designed to work seamlessly with existing business systems.