Dreamforce 2026 | Salesforce CEO Benioff unveils ‘AIForce’ as protesters demand end to ICE contracts

Salesforce on Tuesday (September 15, 2026) introduced ‘AIForce’ — its AI-powered live interface layer for enterprise users — during the keynote session of the company’s annual Dreamforce convention in San Francisco, as protesters outside demonstrated against controversial ICE contracts.Following a Hawaiian blessing, two enterprise AI ads featuring Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey, and a short performance by singer Gwen Stefani, CEO Marc Benioff took to the stage to officially launch AIForce.He pitched the new offering as an “interface revolution,” promising AI interfaces that would be dynamic, intelligent, composable, and live. Protesters outside the Moscone Center in San Francisco call for an end to contracts with ICE | Photo Credit: Sahana Venugopal “We believe that every company can become agentic enterprise, and we’re going to show you the best way to do it by doing it ourselves,” Mr. Benioff said during the keynote address.Justifying the need for offerings such as AIForce when more basic AI products are available, Mr. Benioff noted: “Models alone cannot run the enterprise. Models alone are not going to show us what’s possible. Models also are very probabilistic.”Comment | China’s open AI advantage may not last foreverHe promised zero data retention (ZDR) in the offering and refuted media reports of client data being used to build other AI products.“With AIforce, Salesforce is bringing all the enterprise knowledge inside Salesforce — the data, workflows, business logic, semantics, permissions, security, and governance that already run the business — to any AI interface. The result: Companies can unlock tremendous value from all the business knowledge already inside Salesforce, bring Salesforce’s trusted context and governance into any agentic productivity tool, and drive entirely new levels of growth and productivity,” Salesforce said in a company blog about the release.As part of the keynote, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also joined the session, and were interviewed by Mr. Benioff.Anthropic and Nvidia CEOs on regulating AI industryMr. Amodei spoke only briefly about his September 12 essay titled ‘We Must Pace the Frontier,’ that called for an AI industry slowdown. During the keynote, he stressed on the importance of global, industry-wide safety standards and expressed surprise at the pace of AI growth amongst businesses. However, he noted that people were making use of only 5% or 10% of what the possible value of the technology was.“Let’s re-commit to transparency. Let’s invest more in safety. Then let’s organise the rest of the industry and say, ‘What can we do to set standards for everyone? What can we do to make everyone’s standards better?’ And then finally, there should be an international component to it,” he said on pacing AI.Salesforce’s CEO also announced Koa, Salesforce’s first CRM reasoning model for Agentforce that was built on NVIDIA Nemotron.Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presented a very different view on AI safety, calling for companies to regulate or pace themselves, and independently ensure product safety before release.“The market forces are in there. We don’t need any new laws and we don’t need new regulations,” he said, inviting companies to run as fast as they could.“Innovation/speed and safe products. . .it’s a false choice. You could definitely have both at the same time. So run as fast as you can, but if you feel that at any given point in time, the company’s out of control or the product’s not gonna be safe, you know, take a pause and make sure you get it right,” Mr. Huang said.‘Salesforce has opportunity to use its influence to defend democracy'Dreamforce attendees entering the Moscone Center for the first day of the mega enterprise tech fest crossed protesters raising slogans and calling for an end to Salesforce’s contracts with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).“Salesforce has a history of showing up for our communities. As a Bay Area tech leader, Salesforce has an opportunity to use its influence to defend democracy, refuse to profit from family separation, & to push the tech industry to follow,” stated part of a flyer that a protester passed out.Other protesters held signs calling for fair labour practices and better AI safety.