Salesforce Surges 20% on Record Q2 Beat, Claudeforce Launch and Raised Full-Year Guidance

Salesforce shares rocketed roughly 20% on August 27, its second-best single-session gain in the company's 22-year history and its strongest day since August 2020, after the enterprise software giant posted a blowout fiscal second-quarter 2027 report and deepened its partnership with Anthropic. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $5.90, beating Wall Street estimates by more than $2.00, while revenue grew 11% year over year. Current remaining performance obligation, a key forward-revenue indicator, accelerated to 14% growth in constant currency, and free cash flow surged 81%.

Agentforce and Data 360 combined annual recurring revenue reached nearly $3.9 billion, with Agentforce alone up more than 240% year over year, signaling that AI adoption has moved from experimentation into genuine monetization. Salesforce raised its full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to a range of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion and lifted its adjusted EPS outlook to $16.67 to $16.71. The company also announced the launch of Claudeforce, an AI sales plugin built in partnership with Anthropic that integrates Anthropic's Claude models directly into Salesforce workflows, with general availability planned for September.

An existing Salesforce stake in Anthropic contributed an investment gain that boosted reported profit for the quarter. CEO Marc Benioff used the results to publicly dismiss what he called the 'SaaSpocalypse' narrative, the fear that capable AI models would undermine traditional enterprise software demand, calling the concern 'nonsense' and saying it was time for it to stop. The print and the Anthropic announcement triggered a broad software sector rally: the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF rose about 3%, ServiceNow climbed 5%, and Adobe advanced 3%.

Salesforce added roughly 210 points to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, despite entering the day as only a roughly 2% weight in the index. Analysts at Jefferies, Truist, BMO Capital Markets, Bernstein, Mizuho, Wells Fargo, Stifel, DA Davidson, Baird, Oppenheimer, TD Cowen, UBS, and Monness Crespi and Hardt all raised their price targets, with Jefferies and Truist each moving to $300, BMO going to $260, and Monness lifting from $222 to $266. KeyBanc was a notable holdout, reiterating a Sector Weight rating.

UBS said the organic revenue growth reacceleration trajectory may be enough to ease broader investor concerns about AI displacement risk for the software sector.