Salesforce Posts Higher 2Q Profit, Expands Partnership with Anthropic — 2nd Update

By Kelly Cloonan

Salesforce posted higher second-quarter profit and revenue on rising demand for its artificial-intelligence and data offerings, and also expanded its partnership with the AI company Anthropic.

The results prompted the enterprise software company to bump up its full-year sales and profit forecasts, factoring in a boost in organic growth as well as acquisitions it expects to close this quarter.

The San Francisco company on Wednesday also disclosed an expanded partnership, dubbed Claudeforce, with Anthropic that combines its broad platform of business tools with the AI company's Claude system.

The partnership will launch with Salesforce in Claude, a plugin with more than three dozen prebuilt sales tools such as meeting prep, deal health review and pipeline review that were built jointly by the two companies. The offering is available now to select pilot customers and plans to launch in open beta mode next month.

The companies said they plan to introduce more integrations across Claude, as well as Salesforce and its Slack business.

Shares of Salesforce climbed 13% to $231.93 in after-hours trading. At market close, the stock was down 22% year to date.

Salesforce's second-quarter profit came in at $3.53 billion, or $4.29 a share, compared with $1.89 billion, or $1.96 a share, a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings per share were $5.90, compared with analyst estimates of $3.27, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 11% to $11.35 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $11.33 billion. Sales included a $456 million contribution from Informatica, which Salesforce acquired in November 2025.

Chief Executive Marc Benioff called the quarterly results one of the company's best reports to date, and cited AI as a key factor.

"AI is delivering value across every layer of our platform. We're seeing incredible demand for our AI and data products," Benioff said.

Annual recurring revenue for Agentforce and Data 360-Salesforce's AI products-reached nearly $3.9 billion in the quarter, more than tripling year over year.

For the full year, the company now expects revenue of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion, compared with its prior view of $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion. It now guides for adjusted earnings per share of $16.67 to $16.71, up from $14.06 to $14.12 previously.

The updated guidance reflects an expected boost from organic growth as well as the company's deals for Contentful and Fin, which it expects to close in the coming weeks.

For the current quarter, Salesforce expects sales of $11.42 billion to $11.5 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $3.42 to $3.44. Analysts expect sales of $11.41 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $3.37.

Write to Kelly Cloonan at kelly.cloonan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2026 17:33 ET (21:33 GMT)