Shares in Salesforce Inc. rose more than 9% in after-hours trading today after the cloud-based software company impressed investors with an upbeat outlook despite reporting mixed results in its fiscal 2025 third quarter.

For the quarter that ended on Oct. 31, Salesforce reported adjusted earnings of $2.41, up from $2.11 in the same quarter of fiscal 2024, on revenue of $9.44 billion, up 8% year-over-year. Earnings fell short of the $2.44 expected by analysts, while revenue came in ahead of an expected $9.35 billion.

Salesforce saw subscription and support revenue in the quarter of $8.879 billion, up 9% year-over-year, with an operating cash flow of $1.98 billion, up 29% year-over-year. As of the end of October, Salesforce had a current remaining performance obligation of $26.4 billion, up 10% year-over-year.

Business highlights in the quarter included Salesforce acquiring cloud data specialist Own Co. for $1.9 billion on Sept. 5. The deal, expected to close in January, will see Salesforce integrate capabilities from Own into its software stack to provide customers with a more comprehensive set of tools for data and loss protection.

Salesforce launched the Agentforce Partner Network on Sept. 17. The network allows users to quickly get access to connections to external data sources, specialized third-party actions and unique AI skills and deploy partner-built agents.

On Sept. 24, Salesforce announced that it had entered an agreement to acquire Israeli unstructured data process startup Zoomin Software Ltd. at an estimated price of $450 million. Salesforce plans to integrate Zoomin’s technology into its Agentforce platform to allow customers to use organizational data to inform an array of agentic AI experiences.

Forward to October and on Oct. 15, Salesforce brought its AI technology to the insurance industry with the launch of a new platform called Financial Services Cloud for Insurance Brokerages. The offering, built on top of Salesforce’s flagship customer relationship management platform, is designed to help account managers and others at insurance brokerages deepen their relationships with existing clients.

On Oct. 29, right at the tail end of the fiscal quarter, Salesforce announced that Agentforce, its suite of tools for building autonomous artificial intelligence agents to augment work for enterprise employees worldwide, was now generally available.

“We delivered another quarter of exceptional financial performance across revenue, margin, cash flow and cRPO,” Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer of Salesforce, said in the company’s earnings release. “Agentforce, our complete AI system for enterprises built into the Salesforce Platform, is at the heart of a groundbreaking transformation.”

Benioff further called out the importance of AI agents. “The rise of autonomous AI agents is revolutionizing global labor, reshaping how industries operate and scale,” Benioff added. “With Agentforce, we’re not just witnessing the future — we’re leading it, unleashing a new era of digital labor for every business and every industry.”

Salesforce expects revenue of $9.9 billion to $10.1 billion in its fiscal fourth quarter and revenue of $37.8 billion to $38 billion for the full fiscal year. The full-year outlook was up slightly from the company’s previous forecast.

Charlie Miner, analyst at global research firm Third Bridge Group Ltd., told SiliconANGLE via email that “despite Salesforce making AI its defining narrative, the true turning point hinges on Agentforce execution and adoption.”

“If it proves to be an AI winner and delivers as a revenue driver, Salesforce’s business could see a significant leap forward as early as mid-2025,” Miner added.

David Schmaier, president and chief product officer of Salesforce, spoke with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestream studio, in September, to discuss how the Salesforce Data Cloud is powering AI-driven customer experiences:

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