Salesforce spent the last year bolting AI onto everything like a man duct-taping spoilers to a 1997 Camry. The stock still eats shit. Morgan Stanley noticed.
The bank downgraded Salesforce because—and I'm paraphrasing here—the AI pivot everyone demanded hasn't actually made the company worth more money. Turns out screaming "we have AI now" into the void doesn't move revenue if nobody buys the AI. Revolutionary stuff from the analysts. Next they'll discover that companies need customers.
Retail traders saw Salesforce mention AI at three consecutive earnings calls and bought in like they were getting Nvidia at a discount. They got CRM at full price instead. The difference matters when you're checking your Robinhood account every morning wondering why the lines keep going down despite all the press releases saying the word "Agentforce."
Morgan Stanley's thesis boils down to this: Salesforce promised AI would justify its valuation, AI has not justified its valuation, therefore the valuation is wrong. This is the kind of analysis you pay 1.5% of assets under management to receive. You could have gotten the same insight by looking at a six-month chart, but then you wouldn't have the prestige of being told you're f*cked by someone with an MBA.
The company's AI products exist. People acknowledge they exist. Some people even use them. But "exists" and "drives enough value to support a $270 billion market cap" are different sentences. Salesforce learned this the hard way. Shareholders are learning it harder.
Every tech company on Earth added AI to their pitch deck in 2023 because they had to. Most of them are still waiting for the part where it prints money. Salesforce joined the waiting room early and got a good seat. The appointment keeps getting rescheduled.
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