Close up of Salesforce logo displayed on one of their towers in downtown San Francisco.

The Gist

  • Salesforce joins the smart CRM race. Salesforce launches new AI tool, Einstein GPT.
  • Investment in AI. Salesforce Ventures unveils $250 million generative AI fund.
  • CRM competition heating up. Salesforce announcement comes day after HubSpot launches ChatSpot.AI.

As the battle for AI search dominance rages on, the competition in the smart CRM space is heating up, as Salesforce launches its own generative AI CRM technology, Einstein GPT.

Yesterday's launch of Salesforce's Einstein GPT, comes just one day after HubSpot Founder and Chief Technology Officer Dharmesh Shah publicized his company’s latest foray into generative AI with the alpha release of HubSpot’s ChatSpot.ai, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

According to company officials, Einstein GPT is a new generative AI customer relationship management (CRM) tech that will integrate real-time data from the Salesforce Data Cloud with OpenAI's enterprise-grade ChatGPT technology — and its own proprietary AI models (a set of AI algorithms and tools developed and owned by Salesforce like Einstein Vision, Einstein Language and Einstein Analytics) — enabling customers to utilize natural-language prompts within their Salesforce CRM to create content.

“We’re excited to apply the power of OpenAI’s technology to CRM,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI said in a statement. “This will allow more people to benefit from this technology, and it allows us to learn more about real-world usage, which is critical to the responsible development and deployment of AI — a belief that Salesforce shares with us.” 

In an additional reveal yesterday during TrailblazerDX, Salesforce Ventures, the company’s global investment arm, announced the launch of a new $250 million generative AI fund to bolster the startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible generative AI. Initially, the fund will invest in four companies including Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI and You.com. 

Article: HubSpot Debuts AI Tools Fueled by OpenAI's ChatGPT

Einstein GPT in CRM

As part of the Einstein GPT launch, Salesforce will also release ChatGPT for Slack by OpenAI, which enables users to interact with ChatGPT and generate humanlike responses to a wide range of prompts and questions through the Slack messaging platform without leaving the Slack interface. Further, Salesforce debuted several other integrations.

Einstein GPT for Sales: Automates sales tasks such as drafting emails, scheduling meetings and preparing for upcoming interactions.

Einstein GPT for Service: Create informative articles by utilizing previous case notes. Automatically generate tailored responses from agents to improve customer satisfaction by providing personalized and efficient service interactions.

Einstein GPT for Marketing: Create customized content in real-time to captivate potential and current customers through various channels such as email, mobile, web and advertising.

Related Article: Salesforce Updates Service, Marketing Clouds With Conversational AI, CDP Enhancements

Investment in Cutting-Edge AI

With a stated commitment to incorporating AI into its platform — Salesforce has made several investments in the AI tech over the years.

  • Partnership with OpenAI: In 2019, after investing an undisclosed amount, Salesforce announced it would partner with OpenAI to collaborate on AI research, development and the integration of OpenAI’s advanced AI models into its products and services.
  • Acquisition of Slack: In December 2020, Salesforce announced its acquisition of Slack, a communication and collaboration platform, built on top of advanced AI models that enable sophisticated messaging and conversation capabilities.
  • Salesforce updated its Service and Marketing Clouds: In April 2022, Salesforce Service and Marketing clouds were updated with new conversational AI and customer data platform (CDP) enhancements, including new chatbot capabilities, enhanced personalized customer experiences and improved data management features.

“The world is experiencing one of the most profound technological shifts with the rise of real-time technologies and generative AI. This comes at a pivotal moment as every company is focused on connecting with their customers in more intelligent, automated and personalized ways,” Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said in a statement. "Einstein GPT, in combination with our Data Cloud and integrated in all of our clouds as well as Tableau, MuleSoft and Slack, is another way we are opening the door to the AI future for all our customers, and we’ll be integrating with OpenAI at launch."