Marc Benioff, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Salesforce, has drawn the attention of the global technology industry after saying that the company will not be hiring additional engineers due to the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI).
One of the most influential names in the software industry, Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999 and was instrumental in driving the cloud-computing revolution. Under his leadership, the company grew from a startup to one of the world’s largest enterprise software firms, known for its customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and AI-powered business solutions.
According to Salesforce’s annual report, Benioff has long advocated AI-driven business transformation and workplace automation. His recent comments on the future of engineering jobs have reignited the discussion about the impact of AI on the tech workforce.
Also read: Indian-origin founder shares ‘cold email’ sent to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff 21 years ago: ‘It changed my life’
Why wouldn’t Benioff hire engineers?
In an interview with TBPN, Benioff said that Salesforce will not hire more engineers in fiscal year 2026 because the company is increasingly relying on AI-powered coding agents to handle engineering tasks. According to him, AI tools have provided the company with much needed additional capacity, reducing the immediate need to expand engineering teams.
According to one report, Benioff said during the interview, “We are not hiring more engineers in fiscal year 2026 because I am using coding agents.” The Times of India.
Benioff said AI technologies have increased Salesforce’s engineering productivity by about 30%, reducing the need to aggressively hire software engineers.
However, the Salesforce chief later clarified that AI has not completely replaced human engineers. In an April 2026 interview, Benioff said that Salesforce’s approximately 15,000 engineers were being “hugely augmented” by AI tools such as anthropic models, OpenAI codecs, and cursors, but human supervision remained essential.
Also Read: Salesforce is not giving salary increases to its highest level employees this year. What will they get in return
“The model still can’t work autonomously. We’re not at that level of AI yet,” Benioff said, explaining that engineers are increasingly moving into supervisory roles where they oversee AI systems and code agents.
Can AI replace engineers?
He also said that although Salesforce’s engineering organization became about 30% more productive with AI assistance, the benefit was not significant enough to completely eliminate the need for human engineers.
Changes at Salesforce aren’t limited to software engineering. Benioff said the company has also reduced hiring in customer support as AI agents increasingly handle service-related tasks. At the same time, Salesforce has expanded its sales workforce, adding about 20% more salespeople to strengthen customer relationships and support AI product adoption, according to an India Today report.
Despite growing concerns about jobs being replaced by AI, Benioff has said that the technology is reshaping the role of engineers rather than making them obsolete. Industry projections continue to suggest strong long-term demand for software developers, even as AI becomes more deeply integrated into workplaces around the world.