[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong] Salesforce has directly rebutted market worries about a "SaaSpocalypse."

On Aug. 26 (local time), CNBC reported that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said after its latest earnings report that the view that AI is encroaching on the existing software-as-a-service (SaaS) business lacks basis.

Appearing on CNBC's "Mad Money," Benioff said the "SaaSpocalypse narrative is nonsense" and that "cutting-edge models depend on CRM, they do not replace it." He argued that in the enterprise software market, AI does not operate independently but creates value on existing platforms where customer data and workflows have accumulated.

The market has, for now, sided with Salesforce. The company's shares surged more than 12 percent after strong quarterly results and guidance that topped market expectations. Salesforce focuses on customer relationship management software and also owns the collaboration service Slack and the data analytics platform Tableau.

The key issue is whether AI is eating into demand for subscription software. Earlier this year on Wall Street, concern grew that more capable AI models could reduce companies' subscriptions to traditional software. Worries also emerged that companies could build various paid software tools directly with AI. Because of those fears, Salesforce shares were down 22 percent so far this year as of the Aug. 26 close.

Benioff stressed that the latest results show a different trend from those concerns. He said even AI companies once seen as a threat to traditional SaaS are actively using Salesforce and Slack. According to Benioff, 9 of the top 10 leading AI companies use Salesforce and Slack, and their platform spending has surged 435 percent from a year earlier.

Expanding cooperation between Salesforce and Anthropic was also presented as an example supporting the same logic. The companies unveiled "Cloudforce" on the day. The plugin lets sales staff use Anthropic's Claude to pull customer data stored in Salesforce and handle tasks such as drafting emails and updating records.

Benioff said AI models do not replace Salesforce but rely on customer data, business context and workflows stored in Salesforce. He said Salesforce can serve as the foundation for AI agents, calling it "a company that above all does data business." He added that "these AI models need this level of intelligence, security and control."

The remarks are seen as a public rebuttal to market concerns that the spread of AI could shake the pricing model for existing enterprise software. Salesforce said it will prove through results that rather than AI independently replacing SaaS, it is instead increasing the importance of existing platforms with verified customer data, security controls and work systems. As a result, the focus going forward is expected to be on whether AI companies' actual software spending continues to rise and how much cooperation with Anthropic will expand Salesforce's data and CRM-centered strategy.