Microsoft stands to benefit from rising business spending on AI. Why is Salesforce under pressure?

KeyBanc analysts surveyed the heads of IT departments of companies and found that one of the main beneficiaries of the increase in corporate spending on artificial intelligence next year is likely to be Microsoft: it is its products that IT departments spend the most on. While for Salesforce, judging by the survey results, the situation does not look as rosy, Barron's notes.

IT budgets of companies in 2026 will increase by 3.7%, according to a KeyBanc survey of CIOs. At the same time, within the budgets there is a noticeable flow of funds into the sphere of artificial intelligence: the share of such expenditures will reach 4.7% against 3.2% this year, Barron's writes, without specifying among which companies the survey was conducted. The respondents focused on two large technology companies: Microsoft and Salesforce.

For Microsoft, the publication points out, the survey results were particularly positive, with 91% of respondents planning to increase spending on the company's cloud services next year. "Microsoft is still seen as the most strategically important AI solutions provider," KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader noted in a research note (quoted in Barron's).

Ader maintains an "outperform" rating on Microsoft shares and sets a $630 target price for them, which implies a potential upside of about 28% relative to the Dec. 9 close.

Meanwhile, for Salesforce, according to the survey results, the situation doesn't look as optimistic, Barron's points out. This is despite analysts' expectations that AI will help the company boost sales of its CRM products, the publication adds. "Only 36% of [survey] participants expressed a willingness to pay for AI features from a CRM vendor - down markedly from 46% in our previous survey [in the first half of 2025]," Ader pointed out, emphasizing that "those who did express a willingness to pay were most likely to talk about features for customer discovery, content marketing and support chatbots."

Only 7% of respondents said they use Salesforce's Agentforce AI tool, while Microsoft's Copilot platform is used by 76% of respondents, Barron's notes. Nevertheless, Salesforce also received a positive message: 45% of participants named it the top CRM vendor in the second half of 2025 - up from 35% in the first half.

On Salesforce shares, Ader also maintained an "outperform" rating on the stock with a $400 target price, implying a 53% upside potential relative to the close on December 9. The company's stock rose 0.5% on Tuesday, December 9.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor