Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More
Salesforce has just unveiled a new marketplace called AgentExchange, creating what it describes as the first trusted marketplace for AI agents in enterprise software and positioning itself at the center of what it estimates will be a $6 trillion “digital labor” market.
The company’s push into AI agents—software that can perform complex tasks autonomously—represents one of Silicon Valley’s most ambitious attempts to transform how businesses operate.
“We’ve seen great adoption across customers like ZoomInfo, Remarkable, and Mimit Health who are using Agentforce in Slack to boost productivity,” said Rob Seaman, SVP of Product Management at Salesforce, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat.
The new marketplace launches with more than 200 partners, including Google Cloud, DocuSign, Box and Workday, who are building pre-packaged agent solutions that businesses can implement without extensive technical expertise.
While much of the attention around artificial intelligence has focused on text-generating tools like ChatGPT, Salesforce is betting that specialized AI agents will deliver more immediate business value. These agents don’t just generate text—they take actions within business systems.
“If you look at the overall labor market, we don’t actually have enough people to do the jobs we currently need them to do,” Seaman explained. “This is a big transformation that will change many jobs, but it’s providing more labor capacity into the system.”
The company’s research suggests significant demand for automation of administrative tasks. Amit Khanna, SVP and GM for Salesforce Health, cited research showing that “around 87% of people in healthcare say they work late each day to finish up administrative tasks.”
Salesforce targets healthcare’s administrative burden with specialized AI agents
Healthcare presents a compelling use case for AI agents. The industry is administratively burdened, with clinicians spending significant time on documentation rather than patient care.
Khanna outlined several healthcare-specific applications: “We are looking at three areas: patient access—making appointments, finding providers, benefits verification; public health paperwork; and clinical trial matching.”
For patient privacy, Salesforce has implemented multiple safeguards. “When we send data to language models for summarization, we remove all protected health information first,” Khanna explained. “It uses tags instead of names, generates a summary, and then replaces those tags with actual names before presenting to the user.”
Salesforce’s no-code approach makes AI agent creation accessible to business teams
A significant aspect of Salesforce’s approach is lowering the technical barriers to creating AI agents. According to Seaman, what has surprised him most is “the speed of creation and iteration.”
“The number of people now that can create technology to solve problems has expanded greatly because it’s based on topics and instructions written in natural language, not programming languages,” Seaman said.
This simplification could enable business users to create their own automation solutions without depending on technical teams.
What early Salesforce customers have learned about deploying AI agents successfully
Early adopters have discovered important considerations for effective AI agent deployment. Seaman noted that many organizations “don’t spend enough time thinking about dead ends or negative instructions.”
“It’s just as important to give topics and instructions as it is to provide guidance on what to do if the agent doesn’t know how to proceed,” he explained.
Remarkable, one early adopter, has deployed an IT help desk agent that employees interact with directly in Slack. The agent handles routine tasks like password resets and helps new hires set up their equipment, while knowing when to involve human IT staff.
Salesforce’s vision for how AI agents will transform workplace roles and responsibilities
As AI agents become more capable, questions about their impact on employment are inevitable. Seaman frames the technology not as a replacement for human workers but as a complement.
“I don’t think about it as replacing people. I think about it as augmenting them and helping them focus on the work that really matters,” he said.
In healthcare, Khanna believes AI agents will first tackle administrative tasks before gradually moving into clinical support roles. “The next wave will move toward the clinical side as doctors build trust in the technology,” he predicted.
The market for AI agents is still developing, but Salesforce is positioning itself as a platform company rather than trying to build every possible agent itself. With AgentExchange, it’s creating an ecosystem where partners can build specialized agents for different industries.
Whether businesses embrace these AI agents as essential productivity tools or view them as interesting but not yet critical technology remains to be seen. For now, Salesforce is betting that the future workplace includes both human employees and digital ones.
