Bank of America reinstates Salesforce at Underperform with $160 target on AI monetization doubts
Bank of America turned negative on Salesforce on May 18, 2026, reinstating coverage at Underperform with a $160 price target as the bank framed the company’s AI transition as a structural reset rather than a short-term slowdown, as summarized in BofA’s Underperform rating and $160 target.
What triggered the call
BofA’s thesis centers on three pressure points: muted net-new customer additions, weaker upsell dynamics, and an underwhelming path to monetize Agentforce and related AI features. The research note characterizes the shift to agentic workflows as a business-model risk because automation can reduce the number of human seats that drive per-user licensing, a dynamic the bank describes as a structural AI-driven reset.
Why this matters
Salesforce’s strength has long been its entrenchment and breadth across sales, service, marketing, and analytics. In practice, that moat protects renewal rates but does not guarantee incremental growth if AI agents automate tasks that used to require additional seats or higher-tier SKUs. A common issue in this shift is pricing: when value migrates from users to outcomes, vendors must translate automation into new units of value without eroding overall account spend. If that translation stalls, growth slows even when product adoption headlines look strong.
The near-term setup
The BofA stance sets a lower bar for the stock relative to large-cap software peers and sharpens focus on how Salesforce converts AI usage into revenue and cRPO. The first checkpoint arrives with the company’s next results on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, confirmed on Salesforce’s investor relations calendar. For now, the rating signals expectations for the shares to lag the firm’s coverage universe until there is clearer proof that AI-driven automation expands total account value rather than compressing it.
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