One of the most-watched stocks in premarket trading this morning is Salesforce (NYSE: CRM). Shares are currently surging before the opening bell after the software giant reported its Q3 results for fiscal year 2025. As of the time of this writing, CRM shares are up nearly 13% to $373.40 per share.
What’s behind Salesforce’s stock surge? Here are the three most likely influencing factors.
Strong Q3 total revenue growth
Any way you look at it, Salesforce had pleasing third-quarter results. Here are its most salient figures for its Q3 2025:
To put that all-important revenue figure into further context, CNBC notes that Wall Street analysts were expecting $9.34 billion. The actual figure of $9.44 billion gives Salesforce a clear beat. The company also posted a non-GAAP Operating Margin of 33.1%.
Investors love to see quarterly revenue growth, especially in the high single-digits or more, and it appears that Salesforce’s growth in Q3 is at least a contributing factor in the company’s rising stock price this morning. Yet there is perhaps a more significant one, too.
A rosy picture for AI agents
Right now, Wall Street really cares about AI, seeing it as a key growth point for most companies in the years ahead. And when it comes to artificial intelligence, Salesforce gave investors a reason to feel good.
The company revealed that its AI chatbot offering, called Agentforce, is seeing strong demand. While AI chatbots like ChatGPT try to offer as broad a range of knowledge for the everyperson as possible, many feel that AI chatbots that are specifically focused on one area of expertise—say, customer service or sales management—are what businesses will be searching for as they seek to leverage artificial intelligence in their workflows.
Saleforce’s Agentforce lets businesses deploy hyper-focused AI chatbots designed to help them in various areas, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and more.
As noted by GuruFocus, Salesforce revealed that it closed over 200 Agentforce sales in just one week, which indicated strong demand for the AI product. Salesforce also revealed that it was hiring 1,400 new account executives to deal with the growing demand for Agentforce.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff specifically called out the company’s nascent AI platform in its Q3 press release , boasting, “Agentforce, our complete AI system for enterprises built into the Salesforce Platform, is at the heart of a groundbreaking transformation. The rise of autonomous AI agents is revolutionizing global labor, reshaping how industries operate and scale. With Agentforce, we’re not just witnessing the future—we’re leading it, unleashing a new era of digital labor for every business and every industry.”
But Benioff went even further than that. As noted by CNBC, Benioff revealed that he recently ruptured his Achilles tendon while on vacation in French Polynesia—an incident in which Benioff decided to turn into an AI chatbot sale pitch of sorts.
Benioff said he was disappointed that the treating hospital did not offer AI agents to help him schedule follow-up appointments. “That is the message to our customers, which is how are you going to give some of your people a break, let them get back to their strategic work, let them focus on what really matters,” he said.
A better-than-expected high-end Q4 guidance
A final reason why Salesforce shares are likely surging this morning is because of the company’s guidance for its current fourth quarter. Salesforce said it expects Q4 2025 sales of between $9.90 billion and $10.10 billion. Analysts had been expecting about $10.05 billion, meaning the high-end of Salesforce’s guidance beats that.
However, this is one more external factor that could be helping Salesforce shares this morning as well. Citi has updated its price target for CRM shares from $368 to $390, citing strong momentum at the company, according to Investing.com.
As of the time of this writing, Salesforce shares are hovering around $373.40. Shares had closed at $331.43 yesterday before the company announced its Q3 results after the closing bell. As of yesterday’s close, CRM shares were up nearly 26% year-to-date.
This post originally appeared at
fastcompany.com
Subscribe to get the Fast Company newsletter:
http://fastcompany.com/newsletters