Salesforce is recalibrating its AI pricing models as executives urge users to remain flexible. At the Jefferies conference, Bill Patterson, Salesforce’s executive VP for CRM applications, stated that vendors are still searching for the right pricing strategy.
Patterson emphasized, “any vendor who thinks they have it ‘all figured out is kidding themselves.’” He outlined that various AI providers, from standalone model creators to cloud companies, are exploring which pricing model best fits their use cases.
In mid-May, Salesforce rolled out its new Agentforce pricing that combines conversation and action-based charges — think $2 per AI agent conversation, plus fees for actions like updating records or automating workflows. 
The company introduced Flex Credits, allowing customers to convert user licenses into credits and vice versa. This offers a consumption-based model tied to business outcomes.
"Not every use case is a conversational affair that agents can do, so you’re going to see a broad spectrum – the hyperscalers monetize AI [with] tokens, the applications companies do it in either sort of conversations or actions; or even a third one – which you’ll probably see more of from us – per-user-per-month offerings."
— Bill Patterson
Patterson also noted that some vendors are considering outcome-based pricing, which can be challenging to implement due to ambiguous outcomes. Despite the chaos in pricing structures, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff reassured that the shift to AI will be “a very high margin opportunity” for the company.
