Dive Brief:
- Despite concerns over the value, security risks and workforce impacts of AI, the average number of AI agents nearly tripled across organizations from February 2025 to April 2026, according to a Salesforce report published last week. The customer relations management software vendor analyzed usage data from a cohort of businesses using Agentforce and other Salesforce products, as well as survey data from almost 5,000 respondents across seven countries.
- The average time to create and activate an agent was under two days, down 53% over the analysis period, suggesting a rapid move from AI experimentation to implementation. Agents are also taking on more work — over the last 15 months, the average number of actions per account increased at a compound monthly rate of 31%.
- “Agents can do more than you think,” Caila Schwartz, director of consumer strategy and insights at Salesforce, told Channel Dive. “They’re taking on more of these secondary functions. They’re increasing their actions. They’re becoming more proactive. Agent businesses today can now build a more versatile and interconnected digital workforce than they were able to even just a year ago.”
Dive Insight:
The CRM platform’s Agentic Index garnered strong reactions from industry experts. Keith Kirkpatrick, an analyst at Futurum Group, said the research was indicative of a “paradigm shift in AI deployment” in a recent insight post, noting that the data “underscores a pivotal shift in how companies are using AI to enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency.”
While Salesforce’s numbers show that agentic usage is up, implementation doesn’t always equal value. Less than half of organizations said AI is essential to their core work, according to a recent survey by software company Aptean.
To address questions about measurable value, Salesforce developed the agentic work unit metric. Each AWU represents a discrete unit of work completed by an AI agent — a task reasoned through, a decision made or an action taken.
As of April 2026, Agentforce AWU output grew by a compound monthly rate of 15%, per the report. Schwartz said the consumer industries, particularly those with high volumes of customer interaction, are leading the pack on AWU growth. Retail agents alone account for 22% of total agentic work output, while AWUs grew 18-fold during the analysis period.
Critics of the AWU, which CEO Marc Benioff unveiled during Salesforce’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February, say the metric can fall short of revealing true business outcomes, such as increased revenue or cost reductions.
But Salesforce is confident in its momentum. “We are seeing a measurable impact,” Schwartz said. “There’s a lot of noise out there, but our data is showing a positive ROI.”
The Salesforce press release includes testimony from PenFed, a federally chartered credit union serving military members and families, which deployed two agents named Ace and Echo. Ace acts as an assistant to evaluate account balances, check loan applications and transfer funds, while Echo extends these capabilities to the voice channel, according to the company.
“Our vision has always been to use AI in a trusted, practical, and meaningful way to serve our members seamlessly across every channel,” Shree Reddy, CIO of PenFed said in the Salesforce press release. “Bringing that vision to life meant going beyond simple chatbots to build sophisticated agent experiences with trust baked in.
