The company is focused on improving the monetization of its Agentforce platform, which uses AI to automate business tasks.

Fresh off the announcement that it plans to acquire Informatica as a means of boosting its artificial-intelligence offerings, Salesforce.com Inc. showed investors Wednesday how its existing business is faring.

The software giant posted fiscal first-quarter revenue of $9.83 billion, up 8% from a year before. The company's guidance had been for $9.71 billion to $9.76 billion in revenue, which would have translated to 6% to 7% growth. Analysts tracked by FactSet had been modeling $9.75 billion.

"I'm pleased by our momentum as we capitalize on the exciting agentic AI opportunity," Chief Financial Officer Robin Washington said in a release.

Shares rose about 2% in after-hours trading Wednesday.

For the ongoing quarter, Salesforce anticipates $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue, whereas the FactSet consensus was for $10.02 billion. The guidance implies 8% to 9% growth from a year earlier, or 7% to 8% constant-currency growth.

Salesforce's full-year forecast calls for $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in total revenue. Its prior outlook was for $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in fiscal 2026. The company noted that currency should now be a benefit to the business thanks to the weakening U.S. dollar.

The full-year outlook calls for 8% growth in constant currency, whereas the prior range called for 7% to 8% growth in constantly currency.

"A solid start to the year and perhaps a touch better than we would have expected in terms of the quarterly beat, but the constant-currency guide remaining largely unchanged does not come as a huge surprise given it is still very early in the fiscal year, and in our view, this should give investors some confidence that it is adequately de-risked at this point," Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne wrote.

The main focus areas for Salesforce this year should be "showing accelerating growth over the year, increasing adoption of Agentforce and further upside to the [operating-margin] guide," he added.

"With Agentforce monetization starting to take hold and bolstering the growth of [Salesforce's] AI strategy, we believe the company is now going on the offensive in scaling this strategy over the next 12-18 months which we believe is the right move with the AI revolution now in the software era and seeing more use cases being built in the software ecosystem," Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives wrote.

In the release, Chief Executive Marc Benioff cheered Salesforce's "deeply unified enterprise AI platform - with agents, data, apps and a metadata platform." AI agents were a topic of conversation on Tuesday as well, when Salesforce's management announced plans to acquire data-management company Informatica (INFA) in an $8 billion tie-up.

Salesforce's revenue growth has slowed recently and the company is pushing to drive adoption of its Agentforce offering, which uses artificial intelligence to automate business tasks without the need for human involvement.

"While some investors are expressing concern about a return to larger M&A, we believe the deal represents a measured, strategic move for [Salesforce], with meaningful potential synergies for data cloud and Agentforce, while very much remaining committed to profitable growth," Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz wrote on Tuesday.

The Informatica deal isn't expected to close until the early part of fiscal 2027.