Salesforce analysis into how CIOs are utilizing agentic AI has discovered the know-how to be making their roles extra strategic than ever inside their companies.
The shopper relationship administration (CRM) provider carried out a web based survey with market analysis agency NewtonX amongst 200 CIOs from 24 nations in October 2025. This was the second yr of the survey.
It discovered that AI implementation has elevated by 282% since 2024, from 11% to 42%, and the AI finances has almost doubled. The CIOs surveyed stated they had been dedicating 30% of their AI finances to agentic AI particularly, so most goes to different types of AI, reminiscent of generative AI and conventional machine studying AI. Nonetheless, 96% of CIOs stated their firm both presently makes use of or plans to make use of agentic AI within the subsequent two years.
This elevated use of AI appears to have boosted the vanity of CIOs. Three-quarters stated they really feel extra assured of their position now than they did a yr in the past, and 97% stated they know extra about AI now than they did a yr in the past.
The CIOs – as a direct consequence of agentic AI, based on the researchers – reported working most carefully with CEOs over different C-suite executives as their position has elevated in scope and significance. This has induced 94% of them to broaden their skillsets, and 57% have intentionally honed their narrative-building and storytelling abilities to arrange themselves for agentic AI.
Customer support has emerged as an enormous focus for CIOs due to the appearance and growth of agentic AI, based on the analysis, with 65% of these surveyed working extra carefully with their customer support organisation than all different teams.
A UK retail CIO surveyed stated: “There was extra emphasis [in my role] on teaching and directing the enterprise on the potential and limitations of AI. There’s an excessive amount of hype, which is bigger than a number of earlier rising applied sciences that want grounding in reasonable functions inside our enterprise. Much more schooling is required to undertake and get essentially the most out of it, or prices escalate far faster with out including worth. There’s an excellent larger want to make sure strategic enterprise alignment throughout features to get essentially the most out of the info and perception potential.”
CIOs are turning AI ambition into motion and scaling agentic AI in actual, measurable methods. At Salesforce, we begin by studying what works inside our personal enterprise, then share these classes with our prospects Daniel Shmitt, Salesforce
Salesforce’s personal CIO, Daniel Shmitt, stated, in assist of the analysis: “CIOs are turning AI ambition into motion and scaling agentic AI in actual, measurable methods. At Salesforce, we begin by studying what works inside our personal enterprise, then share these classes with our prospects. Embedding AI into the circulate of labor and constructing belief into each step helps everybody transfer quicker and with extra confidence.”
One other CIO, Chris Campbell, of DeVry College, which is an Illinois-based US college that gives on-line and campus-based diploma programs, stated: “Our shift from on-premise techniques to trusted SaaS [software-as-a-service] platforms positioned us to maneuver shortly on agentic AI. By embedding Salesforce’s AI brokers straight into the circulate of educational advising and pupil assist, we’re not simply modernising infrastructure, we’re enhancing outcomes and saving greater than 500 hours of colleague time yearly.”
“Our shift from on-premise techniques to trusted SaaS platforms positioned us to maneuver shortly on agentic AI. By embedding Salesforce’s AI brokers straight into the circulate of educational advising and pupil assist, we’re not simply modernising infrastructure, we’re enhancing outcomes and saving greater than 500 hours of colleague time yearly”
Chris Campbell, DeVry College
And Alex Waddell, CIO at Adobe Inhabitants Well being, which affords software program and data care administration companies to shoppers within the US healthcare business, stated: “Salesforce’s CIO analysis exhibits the shift from AI experimentation to enterprise impression, and we’re residing that. By bringing Agentforce into the circulate of medical work, we’ve saved greater than $1m in time yearly and given hundreds of hours again to care groups.”
On a extra downbeat notice, the analysis highlighted issues about information safety and privateness. It discovered that solely 35% of CIOs say they’re working extra carefully with chief information officers on account of agentic AI, and solely 14% of their IT finances is devoted to information safety. It additionally revealed that solely 23% of CIOs are “fully assured” they’re investing in AI with built-in information governance.
Requested if the findings and evaluation had been exaggerating the significance of customer support within the basic discipline of enterprise functions, which incorporates enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) and provide chain administration (SCM), in addition to CRM, the CIOs confused that buyer expertise (CX) is a vital space for agentic AI use, whereas it additionally applies extra holistically.
DeVry College’s Campbell stated: “I believe customer support is a pure place. It’s a excessive labour mannequin and none of us have sufficient people to supply the good care that’s actually required, so issues get left on the bottom. So the concept of extending that right into a digital workforce that may lengthen that across the clock and choose up these dropped leads or cries for assist are pure use instances.”
Adobe Inhabitants Well being’s Waddell stated: “Whereas we’re taking a look at it as extra of an inner assist mechanism relatively than as externally dealing with, we should always not constrain it. I’m excited to see the way it goes. We don’t know the place it is going to find yourself, and I’m excited to see the place it is going to go and the place we are able to undertake it.”
Salesforce’s Shmitt added: “I believe it’s going to be extremely transformative in ways in which we in all probability haven’t even imagined but. I believe the important thing factor goes to be agent-to-agent transactions, and because the know-how develops, and as we get higher at it, and it turns into commonplace to have an agent from one system discuss to an agent in one other system, I believe the sky’s the restrict on what we are able to do.”
