Two of the biggest names in artificial intelligence are pulling talent out of one of enterprise software's giants. OpenAI and Anthropic have been recruiting from Salesforce at a brisk pace this year, according to reporting from The Information and other outlets.
The scale is notable. According to Breakingthenews.net and Benzinga, the two AI companies have recruited or "poached" close to 100 Salesforce employees this year. The figure is drawn from LinkedIn profiles: as reported by MSN, those public profiles point to close to 100 moves since the start of 2026.
The sources frame this as a rapid clip of hiring rather than a single mass exit, with the departures spread across the year. Salesforce, identified by its ticker CRM, is a leading maker of customer-relationship-management software — the kind of business tools that AI companies are increasingly trying to build into or compete with.
The available reporting does not specify which roles are moving, what the employees were offered, or how Salesforce has responded. What is clear from the headlines across The Information, Benzinga, Breakingthenews.net and MSN is a consistent throughline: established AI firms are leaning on experienced enterprise-software talent to fuel their growth.
Why it matters: the steady flow of skilled workers from a software incumbent to fast-rising AI labs is a concrete sign of how the AI boom is reshaping where the technology industry's most sought-after talent chooses to work.