Salesforce told investors it could not raise its profit margin guidance because of the cost of running Anthropic's Claude models internally, revealing how heavily AI spending is now weighing on the CRM giant's finances. Deputy CFO Mike Spencer told the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference that the company had "unleashed" Claude across its research and development cycle around six months ago to test how far it could accelerate its product roadmap, and the resulting token spend ate into margin improvements investors had been hoping for.

Salesforce's operating margin came in at 20.5 percent for its Q2 results (ending 31 July), but full-year guidance stands at 20.1 percent, a gap Spencer attributed directly to Claude token costs. He said the firm is now moving into "refinement mode," matching specific AI models to specific tasks rather than defaulting to the newest and most expensive options, and is comparing costs across multiple providers including OpenAI, Cursor and Claude, while experimenting with Grok. In May, CEO Marc Benioff had said Salesforce expected to spend $300 million with Anthropic in 2026; the company joins others such as Cockroach Labs in trying to curb AI "tokenmaxxing" costs, amid Gartner warnings that coding-agent spending could soon exceed developer salaries in some regions.