Microsoft unveils new autonomous AI agents in advance of competing Salesforce rollout

AI agents are reigniting the competition between Microsoft and Salesforce.

Microsoft announced 10 new AI agents for its Dynamics 365 line of business applications — tools that can complete tasks autonomously in areas including sales, service, finance, and supply chain operations.

“Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world,” wrote Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer for Microsoft’s AI at Work initiatives, in a post about the news. “Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process.”

The news, announced Monday at Microsoft’s “AI Tour” stop in London, comes a few days in advance of the planned Oct. 25 general availability of Salesforce’s competing Agentforce autonomous AI technology for sales and service.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been pointed in his criticism of Microsoft’s Copilot AI technology in recent weeks, saying Microsoft is disappointing its business customers and exposing their data to security risks.

Over the past decade, Microsoft and Salesforce have become a classic example of tech-industry frenemies, partnering when it’s mutually convenient, but for the most part competing fiercely on a variety of fronts.

As part of the announcement this morning, Microsoft said 60% of Fortune 500 companies are using its Copilot technology. It cited examples including Lumen Technologies saving a projected $50 million annually due to AI helping its sales associates; and Honeywell seeing productivity gains equivalent to adding 187 full-time employees.

The new AI agents from both companies reflect broader efforts across the industry to take AI beyond the realm of assistant, giving the technology the ability to also complete assignments and tasks autonomously.

Microsoft is looking to AI to fuel new growth across its business, in products and services including GitHub, Windows, and Microsoft 365.

Dynamics products and cloud services generated about $6.5 billion in revenue in Microsoft’s 2024 fiscal year, ended June 30. That represented steady growth — up from $5.4 billion in 2023 and $4.7 billion in 2022 — although Dynamics is still a small portion of Microsoft’s more than $245 billion in overall annual revenue.

Microsoft says it will make its new AI agents available in public preview for Dynamics 365 starting later this year and stretching into early next year. These AI agents come in a few categories:

• Sales, including a Sales Qualification Agent and Sales Order Agent, designed to help prioritize leads and automate order intake.
• Operations, including a Supplier Communications Agent and Financial Reconciliation Agent, which optimize supply chain and financial processes.
• Service, including a Customer Intent Agent and Customer Knowledge Management Agent, designed to improve customer service by automating case management and updating knowledge bases.

Others include a Financial Reconciliation Agent that prepares and cleanses data sets for financial reporting; an Account Reconciliation Agent that automates the matching and clearing of transactions; and a Time and Expense agent for time entry, expense tracking, and approval workflows.

Microsoft also said it will release a public preview next month of the previously announced ability to create autonomous agents with Copilot Studio.