Salesforce, a cloud computing software company co-founded by billionaire Mark Benioff, plans to invest $1 billion in Singapore to accelerate the development of AI and the use of its AI-powered workplace platform Agentforce.
Salesforce and Singapore Airlines also announced a collaboration to develop AI-powered customer service applications for the airline industry.
The five-year investment dovetails with Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 and the nation’s ambition to be a driver of AI innovation, according to Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff.
“We are in an incredible new era of digital labor where every business will be transformed by autonomous agents that augment the work of humans, revolutionizing productivity and enabling every company to scale without limits,” Benioff said in a statement. “Singapore is at the forefront of this shift, and as the world’s largest provider of digital labor through our Agentforce platform, Salesforce is thrilled to expand our work.”
The investment will help Singapore’s companies build digital workforces, bringing humans together with autonomous Agentforce agents to unlock new levels of productivity, according to Salesforce.
“As Agentforce adoption accelerates, it has the potential to drive significant impact across Singapore’s industries, startups, and the public sector,” the company said. Salesforce said thousands of customers worldwide are investing in Agentforce to build and deploy agents that can reason, decide and act.
Singapore has played a crucial role in driving Agentforce innovation and is a key growth market for Salesforce, according to the cloud computing company, which Benioff co-founded in 1999.
Salesforce expanded its AI Research team internationally in 2019 and chose Singapore as its first overseas AI Research hub. That hub’s work has produced over 100 research papers and patents.
“Singapore welcomes Salesforce’s investment, which will boost our ongoing efforts to build a vibrant hub for AI innovation and adoption across our economy,” Jermaine Loy, managing director at the Singapore Economic Development Board, said. “Salesforce’s initiatives in AI research and workforce development will strengthen our ecosystem by catalyzing innovation for key industries and corporates based in Singapore.”For Singapore, which is facing slowing growth in its labor force due to an aging population and declining birth rates, Salesforce said Agentforce is an opportunity for the city state to “rapidly expand” its labor pool.
Apart from co-developing AI solutions for airlines, Salesforce and Singapore Airlines said the city state’s flag carrier will incorporate Agentforce, Einstein in Service Cloud, and Data Cloud into its customer management system for more personalized service to customers.
Salesforce said it’s also expanding its services on Hyperforce, its next-generation platform architecture, in Singapore to provide data residency for Data Cloud, Agentforce, and Unified Marketing Applications by next month.
This will allow Singaporean businesses to capitalize on Salesforce’s Agentforce and data offerings while meeting local data residency and privacy regulations, the company said.
Benioff, who owns 2% of Salesforce, has a $9.7 billion net worth based on Forbes real-time data. He was with software giant Oracle for 13 years as a protégé of Larry Ellison prior to starting Salesforce, a pioneer in hosting software online. He and his wife have pledged $350 million to the University of California, San Francisco, for its children’s hospital and research.
