Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei joined Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Dreamforce 2026 to discuss AI’s rapid growth, safety and enterprise adoption. Amodei outlined an approach involving stronger internal safeguards, industry-wide standards and international cooperation, while both executives highlighted how Claude can unlock Salesforce data and accelerate business decisions. For more details, watch our story and subscribe to our channel, DRM News.
“Only 5% to 10% of AI’s Value”: Amodei Reveals Huge Potential at Dreamforce
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What Marc Benioff said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, hosted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at Dreamforce, praising the partnership and the new AI Force interface running on Co-Work and Claude. Benioff highlighted that Co-Work is on the cover of Time magazine and that Anthropic has become the number one AI provider, three times larger than its nearest competitor. He asked Amodei about the state of the AI industry, his biggest surprise over the past decade, and his recommendations for the audience. Amodei responded by outlining a three-step safety plan from his recent essay, emphasizing self-improvement, industry-wide standards, and international dialogue. He expressed surprise at the pace of economic growth and adoption of AI products. Amodei estimated that only 5% to 10% of AI's potential value is currently being realized, citing his own use of Salesforce with Claude for go-to-market decisions. Benioff concluded by promoting Agent Force, noting over 30,000 customers and 7 billion AWUs.
Key takeaways
Anthropic is the number one AI provider, three times larger than the nearest competitor.
Only 5% to 10% of AI's potential value is currently being realized, even with technology frozen in place.
Amodei uses Salesforce with Claude daily to analyze top deals and win strategies.
Agent Force has over 30,000 customers and processes 7 billion AWUs.
1:23Let's invest more in safety.' Then let's organize the rest of the industry and say, 'What can we do to set standards for everyone?
3:05... to these companies growing so fast, to all these incredible, you know, products that we're working together on and you've been talking about today and how quickly they would become central to everything that's going on in the world, right?
That interface. That is just the beginning of the interface that you're going to see. I think AI Force remains the most exciting thing we have ever done at Salesforce and to see this first version of it running on Co-Work and Claude, which is amazing. I don't know if you saw the cover of Time magazine today, but Co-Work is also on the cover of Time magazine and here we have the CEO of Anthropic right here. Dario, hello Dario, how are you?
Great to have you. Fantastic. Great job, Dario. You're doing an amazing job leading the AI industry, guiding it all right from our Slack headquarters building. We watch you every day.
It's all good karma, isn't it? And we're watching you doing an incredible job. You become the number one AI in the world, three times larger than the nearest provider. It's been amazing to be partnered with you. It's all been very karmic and kismet and good. And one of the things I have to ask you before we get into the interview, I want to talk to you about AI Force. I want to talk to you about Claude Force. I want to talk to you about how you're running your own business, but wow, you really, you know, you, I mean everything from your first essay that you wrote, you know, about loving grace to the essay this weekend on pacing has been incredible. But give us your state of the AI industry and pacing and where your mind is right now.
Yeah, I think it's maybe easiest to explain it by an analogy. So, let's say you're running a car company and another car company, not yours, they have some kind of safety incident, right? Something goes wrong with the brakes, you know, something with the manufacturing. Now, you believe you have the best safety record in the industry. What do you do? How do you approach it? Obviously, it's very tempting to attack your competitor and say these guys are unsafe or safe, but I think the more responsible way to respond to it is to say, 'Hey, first of all, let's look at our own record, right? We may not have had this big high-profile incident, but I'm sure we're not perfect. Let's look at everything and we can always be better. Let's make our practices better. Let's recommit to transparency. Let's invest more in safety.' Then let's organize the rest of the industry and say, 'What can we do to set standards for everyone? What can we do to make everyone's standards better?' And then finally, there should be an international component to it. And that's essentially the three-step plan that I laid out in the essay. The first of which we committed to in the... The others of which we're going to have a dialogue with the rest of the industry about. And I think that's the way to lead the industry forward, to set an example, to say that everyone can always be better.
Let me ask you a question, Dario. You know, it's been amazing what you have been able to accomplish, like I said, but there are a lot of surprises also that you have gone through. So, you know, just tell us what has been your biggest surprise over the last decade. And you know, you've obviously been heads down in AI now for 10 years really in earnest. What's your biggest shock about where we are right now?
You know, it's been the pace of the progress, not just of the technology, but of the economic side of it. So, we, you know, I formulated the scaling laws along with some of my co-founders, which tell you that AI models get smarter and smarter the more compute you throw into them. And so, we had a prediction of just how capable these models would be, but I think what we didn't appreciate is that it would lead to these companies growing so fast, to all these incredible, you know, products that we're working together on and you've been talking about today and how quickly they would become central to everything that's going on in the world, right? I just watched the talks before that where, you know, you guys talked about MCP and Co-Work and Cloud Skills. And these are all new things that people are just beginning to use, but they're being adopted so quickly because the economic value is so great. So, I've just been surprised that such a pace is possible in the business world.
Well, I'll tell you at Salesforce, we are huge Co-Work fans. And also, when I was in Europe, I met with so many customers who are Co-Work fans, it's incredible what you've done with the product. I noticing over your shoulder here, you've got a few Salesforce alumni behind you who are helping you to run your company, which...
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Benioff, M. (2026, September 15). “Only 5% to 10% of AI’s Value”: Anthropic CEO Discusses AI Safety, Claude and Enterprise | AI1G [Interview transcript]. DRM News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1352117/
MLA
Marc Benioff. "“Only 5% to 10% of AI’s Value”: Anthropic CEO Discusses AI Safety, Claude and Enterprise | AI1G." DRM News, 15 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1352117/.
BibTeX
@misc{benioff2026_1352117,
author = {Marc Benioff},
title = {“Only 5\% to 10\% of AI’s Value”: Anthropic CEO Discusses AI Safety, Claude and Enterprise | AI1G},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, DRM News. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {sep},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1352117/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
