Speaking to The Logan Bartlett Show, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff cheerfully explained how AI agents let him “rebalance” his customer support division by firing nearly half the staff.

“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 head to about 5,000 because I need less heads,” said Benioff.

He described the first eight months of 2025, during which an estimated 10,000 jobs have vanished thanks to AI, as “eight of the most exciting months of my career.”

Benioff insisted the bloodletting was worth it because AI can now pester more customers than his human employees ever could.

“There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people. We just couldn’t call them back. But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us.”

Apparently the army of artificial agents, machines that automate the work humans used to do, is now calling back 10,000 leads a week, according to Benioff.

Salesforce is the largest private employer in San Francisco with around 76,000 workers left worldwide, at least until Benioff gets excited again.