Marc Benioff says experts are wrong about tech job deaths to AI, but backs startup replacing workers with AI

Marc Benioff says experts are wrong about tech job deaths to AI, but backs startup replacing workers with AI Brian O’Connell Wed, August 12, 2026 at 12:45 PM GMT+2 5 min read CRM There's a growing gap between what technology leaders say about AI crushing human jobs and where their money is doing the talking. Exhibit A is a new tech firm, June AI, co-founded in 2025 by Efrat Rapoport, a former Salesforce executive, as well as Ohad Hen, Barak Goldstein and Idan Tsitiat. The agentic AI helps businesses deploy AI agents across their existing software systems, automating tasks and integrating AI into complex internal operations.

Must Read Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake.   Here's what it is and 3 simple steps to fix it ASAP Millionaires under 43 hold only 25% of their wealth in stocks. Here's where their money is actually going Multi-billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, who recently told The Wall Street Journal that talk of AI replacing software giants like Salesforce and ruining their stock prices is dead wrong, is a major backer of the new agentic AI company.

In financially backing June AI and its mission , tech industry critics say Benioff is toeing the line between "AI will kill jobs" and his comments about the two technologies coexisting. Anxious software engineers may have nothing to worry about. The proof is in the pudding Case in point, in a 2026 Forward Future podcast interview , Benioff told host Matthew Berman that AI is not ready to replace software engineers, adding that Salesforce software engineers, 15,000 strong, are "hugely augmented" by AI models.

"But still, those engineers are needed," Benioff said. "The model still cannot operate autonomously. " Salesforce, which has built its $162 billion market cap via cloud-based enterprise software for customer relationship management, is also increasingly using AI in its own company to achieve robust results.

While the company's stock price has slid 25. 4% year-to-date, shares have rebounded by over 15% in the past month, thanks in large part to the company's ambitious Agentforce platform, with company revenues estimated to rise by 13% in the first quarter of 2027. In an August 2025 interview on "The Logan Bartlett Show", Benioff acknowledged that AI agents in Salesforce's customer support channels were already supplanting humans, which has led to more customer sales.

"It's been eight of the most exciting months of my career," Benioff said. "I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads.

" Story Continues Read More: Vanguard reveals what's coming for U. S. stocks — and it could be bad news for this group of investors Canary, meet coalmine Now with Benioff's financial backing of June AI, which brings more agentic AI to the corporate technology table, tech experts say software jobs are in peril.

Yet, not in tidal wave-type cuts that have been posited. "I don't see a contradiction, but the software business can do extremely well while some of the jobs around that software might disappear," Ahmed Ameen, chief operating officer of workplace technology firm ET Group, told Moneywise. "For example, if AI can make a platform easier to employ, configure and support, then customers will likely get more value from the product while needing fewer people to make it all work.

" Other workplace technology analysts say the bigger issue is companies like Salesforce describing AI agents as "digital labor" and shifting toward charging customers for work performed by AI rather than simply selling software seats. "The shift is huge," Matthew Baden, managing technical director at the Search Experience, a tech specialist recruitment firm, told Moneywise. "It suggests the unit of value is moving away from how many people are using the software and toward how much work actually gets done.

" For workers, that means the economic value of simply providing capacity is likely to decline. "If a company can use AI to perform more of the execution, the value of the human increasingly sits in the judgment calls that AI can't make for you; deciding what to build, not just building it," Baden said. Right now, the technology sector is mostly seeing AI-skilled technology workers, making individual software engineers faster and more leveraged.

"But augmentation and substitution aren't mutually exclusive," Baden said. "If one engineer using AI can produce what previously required several people, the engineer is being augmented while some of the additional headcount is being substituted. " For companies like Salesforce, the software's value proposition gets stronger "because the customer can run the same rollout with fewer people, and not just buy the software," Baden added.

Expect fewer software jobs and a highly tech-savvy workforce In a cruel twist, technology leaders like Benioff could be right about no "SaaSpocalypse" on the horizon. That's the sharp sell-off and loss of confidence in Software-as-a-Service stocks. But that's not good news for software workers.

"The industry can grow because each person becomes substantially more productive," Baden said. "The net result could be a smaller, higher-skilled technical workforce supporting more software value than ever. " That scenario will help CEOs like Benioff and shareholders more than it will software professionals, who could fall victim to a labor market numbers game with more losers than winners.

"I'm less certain that new roles will appear at the same rate old work disappears," Ameen said. "But there's a chance we could have a booming software industry five years from now that simply employs fewer people per dollar of revenue. " What To Read Next The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028 — and experts say most people won't act in time.

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