Salesforce pitches AI agents as the government sheds staff

Crowds enter the Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center on Howard Street in San Francisco, California Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers / Contributor

SAN FRANCISCO — As the Trump administration shrinks the federal workforce, the private sector is developing artificial intelligence that could fill in gaps — specifically, agentic AI, technology that can take action without precise instructions. 

The “agentic enterprise,” where humans work alongside AI agents, was the theme of Salesforce’s annual conference last week.

Currently, it’s largely a hypothetical in the federal context. Agencies don’t have Salesforce-powered agents in production, and what exactly counts as an AI agent is debatable, as the term is used to describe systems with varying degrees of autonomy. 

Still, “I think government will be the largest users of agentic technologies of any industry,” said Paul Tatum, executive vice president of Salesforce’s global public sector sections, told Nextgov/FCW ...