Salesforce pledges to invest $1 billion in Singapore over five years in AI push

Salesforce on Wednesday announced plans to invest $1 billion in Singapore over the next five years.

The cloud software giant said the investment is designed to accelerate the country's digital transformation and the adoption of Salesforce's flagship AI offering Agentforce.

Salesforce is among the many technology companies hoping to boost revenue with generative AI features.

The company launched the newest version of Agentforce last month. It has previously described the system — which it says can tackle sophisticated questions in Salesforce's Slack communications app, based on all available data — as the first digital AI platform for enterprises.

"We have had a fantastic experience here. We've been here for about 25 years at Salesforce and we're investing another $1 billion in our operations here," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC's Sara Eisen at CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore on Wednesday.

"We don't just do sales and marketing here. We also do extremely advanced artificial intelligence development. We have dozens of some of the very best AI engineers in the world here in our Singapore research center," he added.

Salesforce said Agentforce can help Singapore to "rapidly expand" its labor force in several key service and public sector roles at a time when the country is grappling with an aging population and declining birth rates.

Jermaine Loy, managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board, welcomed Salesforce's investment, saying it will help to boost the country's efforts "to build a vibrant hub for AI innovation."

— CNBC's Jordan Novet contributed to this report.