How cybersecurity standout CrowdStrike aims to capitalize on the AI agent gold rush

Cybersecurity powerhouse CrowdStrike sees big business in helping companies safeguard their AI agents, which by design have access to vast amounts of their sensitive data. These artificial intelligence applications with human-like reasoning and problem-solving abilities are quickly becoming all the rage in corporate America. They are being used in a variety of ways — from customer support to task automation. In fact, a new survey of IT leaders by data firm Cloudera showed that 96% of them said they plan to expand their use of AI agents in the next 12 months. During a "Mad Money" interview Wednesday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told Jim Cramer the growth of AI agents, or agentics, is a "massive opportunity" for the company. Kurtz described these autonomous agents as "superhumans" with access to tons of proprietary company information, including identities and business workflows. He added, "AI agents could be in the billions, and CrowdStrike will be at the forefront of being able to protect those." Within its portfolio, CrowdStrike has seen traction with Charlotte AI, which Kurtz refers to as the company's agentic security analyst. Morgan Stanley analysts agree with Kurtz, saying AI agents are creating an opportunity for CrowdStrike because they expand the "surface area of IT to be protected," requiring heightened visibility, control, and protection. To be sure, it's still early innings for AI agent adoption — and while companies are spending no small fortune to develop and implement the technology, the return on investment is still up for debate. Enterprise software giant Salesforce has been a leader in AI agents, with its Agentforce platform. But it has also been subject to Wall Street skepticism, with analysts and investors questioning whether CEO Marc Benioff has put too much emphasis on AI agents at the expense of the company's core business. Salesforce, which reported earnings on May 28, said that combined annual recurring revenue (ARR) for its Data Cloud and Agentforce topped $1 billion, up from the $900 million provided in February. On "Mad Money" that night, Benioff told Jim that Agentforce was now an "over $100 million ARR product." While $100 million is pretty good for a platform that's less than a year old, it is a drop in the bucket when considering Salesforce's revenue in its latest quarter alone was $9.82 billion. From the Club's perspective, we believe AI agents are a double-edged sword, helping automate workflows while simultaneously creating a greater need for CrowdStrike's best-in-class cybersecurity solutions. Kurtz's discussion with Jim came after the Club name Tuesday evening reported better-than-expected quarterly results on many of the key metrics that investors focus on. The stock, which closed Tuesday's regular session at a record high, lost nearly 6% Wednesday on concerns about mixed guidance and questions about a federal government inquiry into information related to last year's massive IT outage that was caused by a botched CrowdStrike software update. Kurtz defended the company in the probe. Last week, we increased our price target on CrowdStrike to $500 from $400 after the print. However, we maintained our hold-equivalent 2 rating out of respect for the stock's recent run and overall 34% increase year to date. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long CRWD, CRM. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

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Business Wire

2 hours ago

• Business Wire

Salesforce Launches Agentforce 3 to Solve the Biggest Blockers to Scaling AI Agents: Visibility and Control

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world's #1 AI CRM, today announced Agentforce 3: a major upgrade to its digital labor platform that gives companies the visibility and control to scale AI agents without compromise. As enterprise adoption accelerates, the real blocker has become clear: teams can't see what agents are doing — or evolve them fast enough. Agentforce 3 changes that. Built on learnings from thousands of Agentforce deployments since its initial launch in October 2024, Agentforce has helped customers deliver undeniable value. This includes reducing Engine's average customer case handle time by 15%, autonomously resolving 70% of 1-800Accountant's administrative chat engagements during critical tax weeks in 2025, and increasing Grupo Globo's subscriber retention by 22%. Agentforce 3 equips leaders to monitor, improve, and scale their AI workforce with confidence. Agentforce 3 helps companies scale what works, fix what doesn't, and unlock the full potential of agentic AI — with clarity, control, and speed. Share With a new Command Center for complete observability, built-in support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) for plug-and-play interoperability, and over 100 new prebuilt industry actions to speed time to value, Agentforce 3 helps companies scale what works, fix what doesn't, and unlock the full potential of agentic AI — with clarity, control, and speed. Why it Matters: AI agent adoption is surging. According to a soon to be released Slack Workflow Index, AI agent usage is up 233% in six months, and over that same period, 8,000 customers have signed up to deploy Agentforce. But until now, agent platforms have lacked the tooling, governance, and observability needed to scale enterprise-wide. Agentforce 3 closes this gap — delivering the complete visibility, secure tool integration, and enterprise-grade controls organizations need to make agent velocity their competitive advantage. 'With Agentforce, we've unified agents, data, apps, and metadata to create a digital labor platform, helping thousands of companies realize the promise of agentic AI today,' said Adam Evans, EVP & GM of Salesforce AI. 'Over the past several months we've listened deeply to our customers and continued our rapid pace of technology innovation. The result is Agentforce 3, a major leap forward for our platform that brings greater intelligence, higher performance, and more trust and accountability to every Agentforce deployment. Agentforce 3 will redefine how humans and AI agents work together — driving breakthrough levels of productivity, efficiency, and business transformation.' Agentforce Command Center — Monitor, Measure, and Optimize Your AI Agents: As AI agents take on routine tasks and begin collaborating more closely with human teammates, teams need a new observability layer built for the era of digital labor. Agentforce Command Center is that layer: a complete observability solution that gives leaders a unified pane of glass to monitor agent health, measure performance, and optimize outcomes. Built into Agentforce Studio, it completes the agent lifecycle with powerful tools to understand and refine agents at scale. Uncover patterns across interactions to optimize your agents: Command Center empowers teams to analyze every AI agent interaction, drill into specific moments, understand trends in usage, and see AI-powered recommendations for tagged conversation types to continuously improve your Agentforce. Track agent health and intervene in real time: Get live, detailed analytics for latency, escalation frequency, and error rates, plus real-time alerts when the unexpected happens, so teams can act fast and keep agents running smoothly. Understand what's working, and where to improve: Command Center offers detailed dashboards that track agent adoption, feedback, success rates, cost, and topic performance — so teams can see what's gaining traction and where to improve. See what your agents are doing — in the tools your teams already use: Agentforce captures all agent activity in a native, extensible session-tracing data model in Data Cloud — powering analytics, monitoring, and real-time alerting. Built on the OpenTelemetry standard, these agent signals integrate seamlessly with tools your teams already use, including Datadog, Splunk, Wayfound, and other monitoring partners for end-to-end visibility across your existing stack. Deliver a configurable Command Center for every team: Monitor AI agents alongside human teammates — right in the flow of work. Starting with Service Cloud, agent activity will surface in real-time wallboards so contact center supervisors can track performance and escalate fast. And over time, every department will have a Command Center purpose-built for optimizing their agents. Build and test agents fast with AI-assisted development tools: In Agentforce Studio, use natural language to generate topics, instructions, and test cases. Testing Center simulates behavior at scale with state injection and AI-driven evals — so you can pressure-test your agents before going live. 'Agentforce autonomously resolved 70% of 1-800Accountant's administrative chat engagements during the peak this past tax season, an incredible lift during one of our busiest periods. But that early success was just the beginning. We've established a strong deployment foundation and weekly are focused on launching new agentic experiences and AI automations through Agentforce's newest capabilities. With a high level of observability, we can see what's working, optimize in real time, and scale support with confidence,' said Ryan Teeples, Chief Technology Officer at 1-800Accountant. Enabling Secure Enterprise Connectivity with MCP and A2A Support: AI agents can't drive impact if they can't take action using the tools your business relies on. As open standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP) gain traction, they bring new opportunities for interoperability, but also challenges around governance, identity, and control. Agentforce 3 solves this by pairing open connectivity with enterprise-grade trust — giving agents native access to the tools they need, without compromising on control. MCP support built natively into Agentforce: Agentforce will include a native MCP client, enabling Agentforce agents to connect to any MCP-compliant server — no custom code required. Like a 'USB-C for AI,' this enables access to enterprise tools, prompts, and resources — governed by your existing security policies. Turn APIs into MCP servers instantly with MuleSoft: Leveraging new MCP connectors, MuleSoft converts any API and integration into an agent-ready asset, complete with security policies, activity tracing, and traffic controls — empowering teams to orchestrate and govern multi-agent workflows. Easily host and manage custom MCP servers with Heroku: Heroku Managed Inference and AppLink make it fast and easy to deploy, register, maintain, and connect your custom MCP servers. With Heroku's secure infrastructure and DevOps automation, developers can bring trusted custom actions to Agentforce with less friction. MCP AgentExchange Agentforce Gateway Explainer 'Salesforce's open ecosystem approach, especially through its native support for open standards like MCP, will be instrumental in helping us scale our use of AI agents with full confidence. We'll be able to securely connect agents to the enterprise systems we rely on without custom code or compromising governance. That level of interoperability has given us the flexibility to accelerate adoption while staying in complete control of how agents operate within our environment,' said Mollie Bodensteiner, SVP of Operations at Engine. Expanding the AgentExchange — a Leading AI Agent Ecosystem — to Make Agent-First Tools Easy to Discover and Use: As organizations embed AI agents across their teams, AgentExchange already makes it easy to equip them with the trusted tools they need to drive value fast with partner-built agent actions and templates. Now, customers will be able to discover MCP servers from 30+ partners that provide trusted access to new third-party tools and resources and seamlessly connect them to Agentforce through a secure AI agent gateway. Launch MCP partners include AWS, Box, Cisco, Google Cloud, IBM, Notion, PayPal, Stripe, Teradata, WRITER and more. Customers will be able to leverage MCP Servers through AgentExchange from leading partners, including: AWS: Agentforce will enable agents to unlock critical insights from vast repositories of unstructured data stored on AWS, leveraging a suite of MCP servers such as the Amazon Bedrock Data Automation MCP Server and Amazon Nova Canvas MCP Server. This will allow Agentforce to intelligently process and summarize documents, extract key information from images, transcribe and analyze audio recordings, identify crucial moments in video files, query enterprise knowledge bases, perform semantic code repository searches, and interact with databases through natural language interfaces via Aurora PostgreSQL/MySQL MCP Servers — all enhancing customer service, compliance checks, and operational reporting. Box: Agentforce can help retrieve the latest signed NDA from a Box MCP service, including a summary of key terms. Agentforce can then post a Slack update to the relevant teams that includes the AI summarization, the contract in PDF form, and recommended next steps. Google Cloud: Customers can unlock new Agentforce use cases by connecting to key Google and Google Cloud services via MCP. For example, developers will be able to seamlessly connect Agentforce to the Google Maps Platform and generative AI models like Veo, Chirp, Imagen, and Lyria, while also enabling agentic interactions with Google Cloud Databases. This can enable Agenforce actions that span location-based services, creative AI, and transactional data. PayPal: Customers can now power a full range of agentic commerce capabilities by connecting Agentforce to PayPal's MCP server. They can list products, place orders, process payments, dispute claims, track shipping, manage subscriptions, issue refunds, and more with PayPal, making integrations simple and easy. Stripe: Agentforce enables AI agents to directly handle a wide range of Stripe functionalities via its MCP server, including real-time product lookups, quick payment link generation, subscription setup, and faster dispute management. WRITER: Through a secure connection to WRITER's MCP server, Agentforce can call WRITER's enterprise-grade AI agents to automate content generation, knowledge retrieval, and compliance checks all within Salesforce workflows. 'AI tools in healthcare must be adaptable to the complex and highly individualized needs of both patients and care teams. We need to support that goal by automating routine interactions in our patient access center that involve common questions and requests, which would free up the team's time to focus on sensitive, more involved, or complex needs," said Tyler Bauer, Senior Vice President for System Ambulatory Operations, UChicago Medicine. Enhancing the Agentforce Architecture for Unmatched Enterprise Readiness: Underpinning every new capability in Agentforce 3 is an enhanced Atlas architecture, providing an enterprise-ready foundation through lower latency, greater accuracy, global availability, and additional options for control through new LLMs hosted on Salesforce infrastructure. Expanded LLM choice with hosted Anthropic: Agentforce can now use Anthropic's Claude Sonnet model hosted via Amazon Bedrock within the Salesforce trust boundary to meet the needs of customers in high compliance industries. As part of this expanded relationship, Anthropic will work with Salesforce to empower customers in regulated industries to scale Agentforce adoption with Claude. Later this year, Salesforce will also allow customers to use Google's Gemini in Agentforce, solidifying Agentforce's position as the leader in trusted, flexible AI agents. Faster performance and response streaming: Experience a more responsive Agentforce with 50% lower latency since January 2025. Response streaming is also generally available in this release, so users can see answers appear in real time. Greater accuracy through web search, inline citations: Agentforce 3 features trusted, expanded grounding through the addition of web search as a data source, allowing agents to go beyond internal data to answer requests as well as inline citations that provide references to the grounding sources used in responses. More languages, more geographies: Agentforce 3 features an expanded global footprint, deploying to Canada, the U.K., India, Japan, and Brazil to serve AI agent traffic within those regions. This release also adds GA support for six new languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese — with more than 30 additional languages rolling out in the coming months. Enhanced resiliency with automatic model failover: To ensure agents are always on, Agentforce now enables automatic, latency-based failover — dynamically shifting traffic between model providers in case of performance degradation or outages. Bringing Agentforce to Public Sector customers with FedRAMP High Authorization: Agentforce is now authorized and generally available in Government Cloud Plus, which enables public sector customers to bring Agentforce to their missions with the highest standards of trust, security, and compliance. Unmatched Industry Readiness Out-of-the-Box Delivers the Fastest Path to Value from AI Agents: Agentforce customers in every industry can deliver value from AI agents fast through more than 200 pre-built industry actions — half of them new this summer — from patient scheduling, to advertising proposal generation, to vehicle servicing, and more. Agentforce 3 also introduces simplified, flexible pricing with new Agentforce for Sales, Service, and Industry Cloud SKUs with per-user pricing and unlimited usage of actions for employee-facing agents to help teams get started fast and scale boldly. Deploy and Scale Agentforce with Confidence Through Trusted Experts: The Salesforce partner ecosystem, including Accenture, Deloitte Digital, NeuraFlash, PwC, and more, has aided customers across thousands of Agentforce deployments, providing 272,000 certified specialists to deliver strategic guidance and facilitate the successful activation of AI agents that help drive business impact while maintaining governance. 'With Agentforce, PepsiCo is taking a significant step forward in our agentic journey. By unifying our insights through Salesforce Data Cloud, we're gaining a holistic view of our customers and operations. This visibility enables us to continue to act strategically, strengthen engagement, and drive greater value across every market we serve,' said Athina Kanioura, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, PepsiCo. Available Today: Agentforce 3 Agentforce adoption analytics Testing Center enhancements 100+ new, pre-built industry actions New Agentforce add-on SKUs with unlimited employee action usage Heroku managed MCP server hosting Increased speed and response streaming Web Search for Agentforce Data Libraries Agentforce for Government Cloud Plus with FedRAMP High authorization Expanded global availability (Canada, U.K., India, Japan, Brazil) and language support (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese) In Pilot or Beta Today: Anthropic Claude models hosted within the Salesforce trust boundary — generally available in July MuleSoft MCP and A2A support — generally available in July Heroku AppLink — generally available in July Session Tracing Data Model — generally available in August Agent health monitoring — generally available in August To Be Released Soon: Agentforce native MCP support – July Agentforce Command Center and Agentforce Studio app – August Learn more: See the Agentforce 3 release notes Learn more about Agentforce See the new AgentExchange MCP partner collection Learn about Command Center Go deeper on Agentforce MCP support See an in-depth product demo about MCP Get started fast with the new Agentforce guide Explore new pricing options for Agentforce Register for Dreamforce 2025 Join the Agentblazer Community to connect with AI enthusiasts and share insights Any unreleased services or features referenced here are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. About Salesforce Salesforce helps organizations of any size reimagine their business for the world of AI. With Agentforce, Salesforce's trusted platform, organizations can bring humans together with agents to drive customer success—powered by AI, data, and action. Visit for more information.

CNBC

2 hours ago

• CNBC

Jim Cramer says Apple needs to change course — plus, he highlights 2 stocks to buy now

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here's a recap of Monday's key moments. 1. Wall Street has come off Monday's highs, which were driven by Fed Governor Michelle Bowman saying she could envision an interest cut as early as the July meeting. Fed Governor Christopher Waller told CNBC on Friday he also thinks the Fed could consider cutting next month . Rates were getting more attention in the market Monday than the U.S. bombing Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. "I'm not saying [Iran] is a sideshow. But holy cow, it did not drive the [futures] market last night, and it did drive the morning this morning," Jim Cramer said. Monday's moves are about the possibility of a rate cut, he added. 2. Apple has held internal talks about buying AI startup Perplexity, according to Bloomberg. The story makes it clear that Apple has not made any offer and has not talked to Perplexity management. Jim said, "Apple seems to be dead set against any acquisition. That seems a foolish status." Instead, Apple keeps buying back stock, but that is "no longer what the market wants," Jim stressed. "The market wants growth, so you have to buy growth," he added. 3. Cowen raised its TJX price target to $145 per share from $137. "We hosted TJX management for meetings and left incrementally more confident in the setup for FY26 and FY27," the analysts said. Shares of the off-price retailer behind T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods have not done much lately, drifting to the low $120s. After reading the Cowen note, Jim said he views TJX as an "opportunity to buy." Jim also said that with Wednesday's Monthly Meeting coming up, he puts TJX and Capital One as the top two Club stocks to buy. 4. Stocks covered in Monday's rapid fire at the end of the video were Estee Lauder , Dow Inc. , Advanced Micro Devices , Novo Nordisk , Amgen , and Club name Eli Lilly . (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

Forbes

3 hours ago

• Forbes

Navigating The Data Highway: A Guide To Salesforce Data Migration

Vamsi Krishna Gosu - Founder & Director, TechForce Services. For businesses already leveraging Salesforce, data is the lifeblood. It fuels customer relationships, drives sales techniques and informs critical decision making. However, as businesses evolve, merge or upgrade their Salesforce environments, the need to transport this vital data, a process known as Salesforce data migration, becomes paramount. While seemingly straightforward, a poorly finished statistics data migration can cause chaos, statistics loss and significant business disruption. Understanding the nuances and best practices is important for a continuing transition and enduring success on the Salesforce platform. Understanding Salesforce Data Migration Salesforce data migration involves the strategic transfer of data between distinct Salesforce orgs or from outside systems into Salesforce. This will be triggered by numerous scenarios, which include enforcing a new Salesforce instance, consolidating multiple orgs after a merger or acquisition, upgrading to a newer Salesforce edition or integrating data from legacy CRM systems. The intention is not just to transport data but to ensure its integrity, accuracy and usability within the new surroundings. The Peril Of Data Duplication One of the primary concerns throughout data migration is the dreaded specter of data duplication. Imagine consumer data appearing multiple times, leading to confused sales efforts, faulty reporting and a frustrating experience for both your team and your customers. According to a latest study by Gartner, data quality costs organizations a mean of $12.9 million per year. Data duplication is a sizable contributor to this cost, inflating storage needs, skewing analytics and hindering customized customer engagement. Therefore, a sturdy data migration strategy must prioritize de-duplication strategies, often involving data cleansing and matching guidelines before, at some point during and after the migration process. Ensuring Data Accuracy And Completeness Beyond keeping off duplicates, ensuring data accuracy and completeness is equally critical. Migrating outdated, incorrect or incomplete data into a new Salesforce environment perpetuates present problems. This can result in flawed insights, misdirected advertising campaigns and, ultimately, a lack of trust in the CRM system. A thorough data assessment and cleansing method is a non-negotiable step. This involves figuring out and rectifying inconsistencies, standardizing data formats and enriching data, which is essential to improve its quality in the target Salesforce org. Key Stages Of The Migration Process The system of Salesforce data migration usually entails numerous key stages. First, a complete planning section is essential, outlining the scope of the migration, figuring out data sources and targets, defining data mapping rules and establishing timelines and duties. This is observed with the aid of the extraction of data from the source system, its transformation to align with the goal Salesforce schema, and ultimately, the loading of the cleansed and transformed data into the new environment. Post-migration, rigorous data validation and testing are crucial to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the migrated data. Real-World Challenges And Lessons Learned Real-world reports often highlight the complexities involved. A Salesforce administrator at a developing e-commerce company lately oversaw the migration of data from their legacy CRM to a new Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation. "We initially underestimated the amount of data cleansing required," she recounts. "We had years of inconsistent data entry, and identifying and merging duplicate customer accounts was a significant undertaking. We ended up investing heavily in data quality tools and dedicating a significant portion of our project timeline to this crucial step. The effort paid off, though. Our sales team now has a much cleaner and more reliable view of our customer base, leading to more effective targeting and improved sales conversions." Another common challenge arises during the combination of data from multiple disparate systems. Consider a situation where a corporation acquires another business with its CRM and operational databases. Merging those datasets into a unified Salesforce environment requires careful data mapping to ensure that fields align effectively and relationships between unique data objects are preserved. Without meticulous planning, critical information can be misplaced or incorrectly related, leading to significant operational demanding situations. Choosing The Right Tools And Methodologies Choosing the right tools and methodologies is also critical for a successful data migration. Salesforce offers its suite of data migration tools, such as the Data Import Wizard and Data Loader, which are suitable for different data volumes and complexities. For more intricate migrations involving large datasets or complex transformations, third-party ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools can offer enhanced capabilities and automation. Conclusion: A Strategic Imperative In conclusion, Salesforce data migration is more than just a technical exercise; it's a strategic imperative that directly impacts an organization's ability to leverage its CRM effectively. By prioritizing data quality, meticulously planning each level of the procedure and learning from real-world experiences, businesses can navigate the data highway successfully, ensuring a smooth transition and unlocking the entire potential of their Salesforce investment. Ignoring the intricacies of data migration can lead to expensive mistakes and hinder growth, underscoring the importance of a well-defined and diligently accomplished method. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?