--- title: The Truth About AI description: Marc Benioff on why the Agentic Enterprise will define the next decade of the AI revolution. canonical: https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-01-15T12:01:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T01:03:54.174Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Truth About AI og:description: Marc Benioff on why the Agentic Enterprise will define the next decade of the AI revolution og:url: https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt14083370938f5aab/6998ccd6c8dcb4061db50c90/benioff-ai.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The Truth About AI og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Truth About AI twitter:description: Marc Benioff on why the Agentic Enterprise will define the next decade of the AI revolution twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt14083370938f5aab/6998ccd6c8dcb4061db50c90/benioff-ai.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jan 15, 2026 # The Truth About AI by [Marc Benioff](https://time.com/author/marc-benioff/) ## Marc Benioff Benioff is Salesforce Chair and CEO, TIME owner, and a global environmental and philanthropic leader  Illustration by Daniel Hertzberg for TIME In Hampshire and Thames Valley in southern England, a new kind of cop is on the beat—and it doesn’t wear a uniform. “Bobbi,” built on my company’s Agentforce platform, is an autonomous system that handles non-emergency calls to the police-—the thousands of routine questions each day that can overwhelm response centers and slow response times. Bobbi now addresses many of these calls instantly, freeing human officers to focus on the critical emergencies that require, with lives hanging in the balance, the judgment, empathy, and on-the-ground experience that only humans can offer. Bobbi reflects an important shift in how AI is showing up in the world. What makes the platform work isn’t just a large language model (LLM) like [ChatGPT](https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/) or [Claude](https://time.com/7287806/anthropic-claude-4-opus-safety-bio-risk/). It’s the way AI is woven into existing law-enforcement data, connected to the systems and applications police already rely on every day, and guided by people who set priorities and intervene when needed. That’s what I call the Agentic Enterprise: AI, data, apps, and people all working together as one unified system that turns intelligence into action. **Read More:** [The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year](https://time.com/7339685/person-of-the-year-2025-ai-architects/) I’ve been part of many waves of technology through my career, from the cloud to mobile, social, and now AI. Each arrived with enormous excitement, and sweeping assumptions. These assumptions—like the belief that [social media](https://time.com/7337866/big-tech-social-media-regulation/) would bring the world closer together—rarely played out the way people first imagined. True to form, with AI we are now moving past the honeymoon phase of dazzling expectations and into real-world complexity. This is perhaps the most important, and most misunderstood, phase of every[ tech revolution](https://time.com/7339628/geoffrey-hinton-ai/). It’s the moment when the deeper truths that will actually shape the next decade begin to emerge. I believe there are three such truths that every leader and organization needs to embrace to ensure that this remarkable technology delivers on its potential. The first is that while [LLMs](https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6980134/ai-llm-not-sentient/) are incredible achievements, built through years of deep research and massive technical investment, they are also increasingly interchangeable infrastructure. History shows us that as a technology matures, the market moves beyond the initial breakthrough into a continuous game of innovation leapfrog. We’re seeing it now with AI: Google’s Gemini 3 advancing long-horizon reasoning and real-time multimodal understanding; Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet delivering frontier-level performance at a dramatically lower cost; OpenAI’s GPT-4o introducing real-time voice interaction with striking emotional nuance. Over time, LLMs will become more of a commodity layer, chosen less for uniqueness and more for performance, efficiency, and availability. AI agents themselves will move fluidly across models, selecting the right one for the task at hand, often without a human ever noticing. The second truth is that what we build on top of the LLM—the trusted data and workflows that connect AI to the way we work and live—matters most. Trusted data brings context, truth, and greater understanding; apps provide the workflows. AI agents tie it all together with speed, insight, and the ability to operate at a level of [productivity](https://time.com/7342494/ai-changed-work-forever/) and scale that no team could manage on its own. The final truth is the most important one: the role of humans. It is people who bring the creativity to see around corners, the values that guide decisions, the relationships that hold customers and teams together. That’s why I believe deeply that humans must stay at the center of the Agentic Enterprise, with AI working alongside us. AI should [elevate humanity](https://time.com/7343801/human-connection-ai-era/), not diminish it. Until recently, the pace of AI innovation was outstripping adoption. That gap may now be beginning to close. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this year, Agentforce will provide personalized guidance through the week, recommending sessions based on attendees’ bios and interests, enabling networking, and even booking meetings and sessions on their behalf. At Williams-Sonoma, the “Olive” agent now handles about 60% of customer chats, grounding each interaction in trusted data and improving response times. Inside my own company, our IT Support agent provides instant answers to common issues, now resolving 35% of IT issues independently and saving what we project to be 25,000 hours of work annually. Nonprofits, governments, and community organizations are also using AI agents to help humans do what humans do best. At [Pledge 1%](https://www.pledge1percent.org/), a nonprofit I co-founded that includes roughly 20,000 companies that have given more than $3 billion back to their communities, AI agents match social needs with volunteers and resources at a scale no team could perform manually. At [Blue Star Families](https://bluestarfam.org/), an agent assists staff in helping military families—simplifying a maze of information and partners. At the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the Office of Chief Counsel, one of the country’s more complex legal operations, now [automates](https://gpscasestudies.salesforce.com/articles/article-1-irs) as much as 98% of activity in some workflows. This isn’t about replacing people. It is about giving them teammates that make organizations faster, more accurate, and more accessible. The task before us is not to predict which LLM will win in the marketplace, but to build systems that empower AI for the benefit of humanity. The choices we make now—about architecture, governance, and partnership between people and machines—will determine whether we turn this moment of possibility into lasting progress that strengthens institutions, expands opportunity, and unlocks human potential. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/"},"headline":"The Truth About AI","datePublished":"2026-01-15T12:01:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:03:54.174Z","description":"Marc Benioff on why the Agentic Enterprise will define the next decade of the AI revolution.","url":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/","keywords":["Davos 2026","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt14083370938f5aab/6998ccd6c8dcb4061db50c90/benioff-ai.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Marc Benioff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/marc-benioff/"}],"creator":"Marc Benioff","articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt14083370938f5aab/6998ccd6c8dcb4061db50c90/benioff-ai.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/davos-2026/","name":"Davos 2026"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339209/ai-revolution-agentic-enterprise/","name":"The Truth About AI"}}]}] ```