It is reported that Baird, a well-known investment institution, recognized Salesforce's planning for Data Cloud solutions and AI layout and maintained its "outperform" rating on the stock with a target price of $295. As of the close of trading on Wednesday, Salesforce closed at $235.8.

Baird analysts Rob Oliver and Patrick Schulz said in a research report, "Salesforce is very focused on its key Data Cloud solutions. The company has mentioned its strong strength, but the overall situation is mixed. Although it is not too important from the perspective of potential revenue scale, we believe this will still be a growth area that investors should focus on. "

It is reported that Baird held a dinner with Salesforce's investor relations team last week, discussing macro environment and future business plans.

After the cloud software giant Salesforce released a first-quarter financial report and performance outlook lower than market expectations, the company's stock price has continued to decline since the end of last month. Recently, the stock price has rebounded, but the stock price still fell by about 2% at the end of Wednesday's trading. This year, it has fallen more than 10%, substantially underperforming the S&P 500 index's rise of more than 13% so far this year.

Baird analysts Oliver and Schulz stated that "although the revenue data for Q1 2025 is lower than expected, the management team of the company has re-emphasized the performance guidelines for Q1 25, and its confidence in the future performance growth rate has offset the continued macroeconomic pressure."

"Salesforce is not the only company that proposes more macro-challenging enterprises. Software giants Couchbase, MongoDB, and Workday have also proposed similar trends, but the company is still doing its best to layout generative AI technology before investors gain confidence, and the company needs to announce a very robust quarterly performance."

Cloud software giant Salesforce (CRM.US) accelerates its layout of AI, trying to break the low-growth trend.

Under high inflation and the Fed's long-term maintenance of high interest rates and other macro pressures, some enterprises have begun to reduce their SaaS cloud software subscription scales. Salesforce's Q1 revenue was $9.13 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.7%, lower than the market's expected $9.15 billion. The company expects that in the fiscal quarter ending in July, revenue will only increase by 8%, to $9.25 billion, which may be the first time in nearly 20 years since Salesforce went public to achieve single-digit quarterly sales revenue growth rate.

In order not to fall behind Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other large technology giants in the AI era, Salesforce and other enterprise software leaders such as Snowflake are stepping up their efforts to lay out AI, trying to attract more users to use their software by embedding powerful generative AI tools like ChatGPT into their software products to boost revenue scale. However, for these software companies, unlike software giant Microsoft's direct control of OpenAI, the industry leader, and Google's huge first-mover advantage in the AI field, in the short term, Salesforce and other software companies' huge investments in AI, such as spending a lot of money to purchase NVIDIA AI GPU, may not necessarily be reflected in performance.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emphasized at the earnings conference that the company's recent emphasis on profits and long-term potential of AI is very positive for the company. Benioff said in a statement: "We are in a very favorable position to help companies achieve the promise of artificial intelligence in the next decade." However, most Wall Street analysts expect that the generative AI functionality embedded in Salesforce's applications may not increase revenue until 2025 or 2026.

Salesforce is doubling down on its AI efforts and is currently focused on integrating generative AI technology into its various cloud computing solutions, including the Data Cloud solution, to significantly create revenue increments. The company has chosen London as its first AI hub where its experts and clients can collaborate to drive AI innovation and provide important opportunities for skill enhancement. The San Francisco-based software technology giant had promised to invest $4 billion in its UK business over five years to reinforce AI innovation.

As a part of its focus on the UK business, Salesforce Ventures has invested over $200 million in UK companies, including text-to-voice businesses and AI speech generator company, ElevenLabs, as well as AI bidding writing engine, AutoGenAI.

Salesforce has already begun incorporating AI technology into its cloud computing solutions to provide more intelligent and personalized customer relationship management and business applications. For instance, Salesforce rolled out its AI platform called "Einstein" to add intelligence to enterprise CRM and business applications. Utilizing machine learning and natural language processing technologies, Einstein helps businesses predict customer behavior, provide personalized recommendations, automate tasks, and more. Among its features is Einstein Bot, a generative AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, which allows customers to access technical support and various cloud platform resources through a simple chatting interface.