DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK (YET)

(CRM), (NVDA), (MSFT)

Salesforce (CRM), the cloud granddaddy turned AI contender, has been dancing on the edge of everyone’s patience for the better part of this year. 

While the tech herd stampedes toward obvious plays like Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce quietly morphs into a stealthy AI enabler, one that’s actually positioned to monetize the magic rather than just slap “AI” on a slide deck and watch the stock pop. 

But let’s be clear. Salesforce’s isn’t a story for the momentum-chasing Robinhood crowd. This is a game of chess, not roulette.

At first glance, the company’s valuation still raises an eyebrow or two. With a GAAP PE north of 33 and non-GAAP just under 22, it’s not exactly bargain-bin material. But then again, Salesforce isn’t some AI dream floating on fumes. 

It’s a revenue-generating machine with the muscle to acquire its way into AI relevance, which is exactly what it’s doing. 

The acquisition of Informatica was not an accident, but a deliberate bet on data, the lifeblood of every serious AI application. Garbage in, garbage out, as we like to say in the Valley. 

And Spindle AI, the company’s pending prize, is a quiet killer in agentic AI, capable of stress-testing complex “what if” business scenarios faster than most of its peers.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Salesforce hasn’t had a charmed year. 

The stock’s been sliding, and the market’s mood is as twitchy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Investors are skittish about anything that smells even faintly speculative, and AI, for all its promise, still has that new-tech gloss. 

But here’s where Salesforce slips under the radar: it’s not pitching AI moonshots. It’s engineering practical agentic AI that can actually plug into enterprise workflows and generate productivity, today and not in some sci-fi tomorrow. 

The real opportunity here lies in what most people aren’t seeing. Everyone’s gawking at generative AI, but the real action – where enterprises will spend real money – is in agentic AI. These are systems that act on behalf of users, make decisions, run tasks end-to-end, and learn over time. 

And Salesforce, with its CRM command center and business automation backbone, is sitting in the ideal launchpad. 

Spindle AI’s ability to build dynamic scenario landscapes – every permutation, not just a handful of what-ifs – could become indispensable for CFOs and COOs. While it’s not so obvious right now, this is operational intelligence embedded in the workflows of tomorrow’s Fortune 500.

There are caveats, of course. Execution risk looms large. Integrating acquisitions like Informatica and Spindle isn’t a plug-and-play affair, and Salesforce’s own history of integration is checkered. 

And let’s not ignore the elephant in the server room: hallucinations. Those charming moments when an AI tells you Tokyo is the capital of Italy. That’s still a real risk. 

But Salesforce’s data-first approach could shine easily here. By controlling and cleansing the data inputs through Informatica, they stand a better chance than most at minimizing the nonsense.

The fear that AI could cannibalize Salesforce’s own offerings is not unfounded. Why pay for CRM when AI can help companies roll their own? But the smart money knows that DIY AI isn’t delivering. 

A recent MIT study showed 95% of in-house generative AI projects have failed to yield returns. The ones that worked? You guessed it – collaborations with vendors who know their domain. 

Salesforce is not just a vendor; it’s a category-defining platform with a Rolodex of paying enterprise clients and a decades-long track record. That kind of embedded trust matters when you’re deploying AI into billion-dollar business processes.

On the financial front, the fundamentals look surprisingly healthy, despite all the tech indigestion of late. 

Salesforce sits on over $15 billion in cash and short-term investments, with manageable debt and a solid asset base. That gives it dry powder to keep acquiring, building, or buying its way to AI dominance. 

And its price-to-sales ratio – at 5.66 – is modest compared to AI darlings like Nvidia (26.85) or even Microsoft (12.49). The market is still discounting Salesforce’s AI upside, which is exactly where savvy investors make their move.

Still, I wouldn’t back up the truck just yet. Revenue growth is respectable at just over 8% YOY, but that’s peanuts next to the torrid growth in pure AI plays. 

And while gross margins are robust, net margins tell a less inspiring tale. We’ll need to see how well the Agentforce initiative converts into real revenue. With 12,500 closed deals already, there’s smoke but we’re still waiting to see the fire.

So what’s the play here? You nibble. You don’t gorge. Keep your powder dry ahead of Q3 earnings. 

If Salesforce surprises to the upside, and I suspect it might, given how under the radar its AI efforts still are, then we’ll be off to the races. But if it flops, you’ll get a better entry point. 

Either way, this is one of those rare moments where Wall Street’s herd mentality has left the back door open. Walk through it carefully, and you might just find that Salesforce becomes one of AI’s stealthiest long-term winners.