Salesforce has signed a $2.5 billion seven-year contract with Google Cloud.
The contract will enable Salesforce customers to run their customer-management software, Agentforce autonomous AI assistants, and Data Cloud products on Google Cloud.
First reported by Bloomberg, the publication speculates that this is an effort to entice customers currently using Microsoft's offerings. DCD has contacted the companies involved for more information about the motivation.
Google Cloud's CEO Thomas Kurian told Bloomberg that the two companies already have many customers in common. Kurian added: "Salesforce could host their stuff anywhere. But I think they see the quality of our technology, the growth we have in our customer base.”
Customers set to begin moving their Salesforce applications to Google Cloud include Wayfair and Accenture.
Google customers will be able to procure Salesforce offerings via the Google Cloud Marketplace, while Salesforce's Agentforce customers will have access to Google's Gemini models.
In an official media release, Kurian said: “Salesforce’s selection of Google Cloud as a major infrastructure provider means enterprise customers can now deploy some of their most critical applications on our highly secure, AI-optimized infrastructure - with minimal friction.
"Our mutual customers have asked us to be able to work more seamlessly across Salesforce and Google Cloud, and this expanded partnership will help them accelerate their AI transformations with agentic AI, state-of-the-art AI models, data analytics, and more.”
The Bloomberg report suggests that, beyond looking to compete against Microsoft, Salesforce's pivot of its AI strategy to focus on AI agents that can complete tasks without human supervision requires a larger amount of compute capacity.
Salesforce is also a known user of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing offerings. The two companies expanded their partnership in November 2023 to include AWS offering some Salesforce products on its marketplace. According to a report from The Information, the company was also in discussion with Microsoft and Oracle about using their cloud compute capacity.
