The profound reliance of Fortune 500 companies on Salesforce was starkly highlighted by a global outage exceeding seven hours. The disruption occurred during the second day of the recent Dreamforce conference, where the $40 billion SaaS provider was actively promoting AIforce and its expanding suite of AI products. The immediate question is how the company intends to monetize these new offerings.
AIforce underscores the growing inadequacy of the per-user licensing model. Revealed at Dreamforce, it leverages Salesforce’s Headless Toolkit to make the company’s data, workflows, and business logic accessible through interfaces like Slack and Claude. As AI agents and APIs execute tasks rather than human users occupying digital seats, the traditional per-user charging method becomes increasingly illogical.
Earlier this month, Bill Patterson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CRM Applications, stated during an investor webinar that Salesforce is developing “a new pricing structure that aligns with the benefits customers derive from this technology.” Under this model, AI customer service agents would be priced based on the number of cases they resolve.
However, outcome-based pricing is not universally applicable. Patterson acknowledged that some agents operate across multiple disciplines, domains, and products, making it difficult to identify a single measurable result. Consequently, Salesforce is also developing bundles and utilizing Flex Credits to charge customers based on consumption.
The company has strong reasons to move beyond traditional licensing. License revenue is currently dragging down growth, while AI agents complicate an approach fundamentally built around charging for human users.
“Licenses are currently weighing things down. They represent a headwind,” Mike Spencer, Salesforce’s Deputy CFO and Head of Finance, told the Deutsche Bank 2026 Technology Conference last month.
Spencer described the company’s experiments as “an anxiety-filled architecture of differing pricing structures and contract frameworks.” Salesforce is currently testing three charging methods: conventional seat licenses, consumption-based fees through Flex Credits, and outcome-tied fees.
Spencer anticipates that consumption revenue will grow as more customers deploy AI systems into production and purchase additional credits—what the company terms “refilling the tank”—though he notes it will take another three to five years to become a material portion of revenue.
In addition to these charging mechanisms, Salesforce offers several contract structures. Traditional annual commitments coexist with Agentic Enterprise License Agreements (AELAs), which provide broad access for a fixed price, and the newer Salesforce Commit.
Salesforce Commit mirrors the model used by hyperscalers. For instance, a customer might commit to spending $10 million over three years, then distribute that allowance among seats, Flex Credits, and other consumption types as their requirements evolve.
Pricing outcomes is more difficult because both parties must agree on an objective measure of success. “The key to outcome-based pricing is maintaining strict objectivity regarding the measurements driving the outcomes, and that always tends to be the challenge,” Spencer said.
For now, customers must navigate the existing contracts. In January, Gartner warned Salesforce users that unlimited AELAs might not be available at renewal, making future costs harder to predict. The analyst firm recommended negotiating limits on price increases if Salesforce transitions customers to contracts with defined usage allowances.
Salesforce denied that it was moving away from capped agreements, stating that renewals would remain flexible and tailored to help customers maximize the value of their usage.
Preet Takkar, PwC’s global and US Salesforce leader, expects outcome-based pricing to become far more prevalent by 2030, although he notes “it will take time.” PwC maintains a global alliance with Salesforce.
Takkar noted that PwC has already introduced outcome-based pricing for some customers, placing its own fees at risk through gain-sharing or risk-and-reward agreements “so that our clients do not have to print new money” for digital and AI transformation.
Takkar argued that seat-based licensing makes less sense when AI agents, rather than just human employees, access applications and their data. He stated that charging for every API request could discourage use, whereas completed work or business outcomes could provide more meaningful units for billing.
Takkar stated he did not expect capped agreements to disappear immediately, but predicted that unlimited deals would gradually give way to spending commitments and eventually to charges tied to results.
Takkar said customers should press Salesforce on the economics rather than merely demanding more features and agents. Mature buyers increasingly want to understand how the technology will affect their profit and loss and what business outcomes it will generate.
Some Salesforce customers may be questioning the business outcome of this week’s outage. Although service has been restored, the interruption demonstrated how dependent organizations already are on the platform—a reliance likely to deepen as they entrust more work to its AI agents. ®
