Salesforce, the customer relationship management giant, has intensified its focus on national security with the launch of a new business unit named Missionforce. Announced on Tuesday, the unit will concentrate on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into defense workflows, specifically targeting personnel management, logistics operations, and strategic decision-making, according to a company press release.
Kendall Collins, who joined Salesforce in 2023 and currently serves as chief business officer and chief of staff to CEO Marc Benioff, will lead Missionforce. Collins stated in the press release that the unit aims to "bring the best of AI, cloud, and platform technology from the private sector to modernize critical areas including personnel, logistics, and analytics." He further added that the objective is to enable "warfighters and the organizations that support them operate smarter, faster, and more efficiently."
Salesforce has maintained contracts with the U.S. government for several years, extending its services across various federal agencies and branches of the U.S. military, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The company does not publicly disclose the number of government contracts it holds or the specific revenue generated from these agreements.
This development aligns with a broader trend among technology companies increasingly developing and offering services tailored for the U.S. government. In January, OpenAI introduced a version of its ChatGPT platform designed for U.S. government agencies. Subsequently, in August, the company reached an agreement to provide federal agencies access to its enterprise ChatGPT tier for an annual fee of $1.
Other companies have also pursued similar strategies. Anthropic announced its provision of access to its government and enterprise tiers of the Claude chatbot to the U.S. government for $1 a week after OpenAI's announcement. Google followed suit in late August with "Gemini for Government," offering its AI services to federal agencies at an introductory price of 47 cents for the first year.
