Salesforce launches ‘Missionforce,’ a national security-focused business unit

Salesforce is increasing its focus on national security.

The customer relationship management giant announced the creation of a new business unit called Missionforce on Tuesday. It will be focused on incorporating AI into defense workflows in three main areas: personnel, logistics, and decision making, according to a company press release. 

Missionforce will be helmed by Kendall Collins, who joined Salesforce in 2023 and is currently the chief business officer and chief of staff to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.  

“With Missionforce, we’ll now bring the best of AI, cloud, and platform technology from the private sector to modernize critical areas including personnel, logistics, and analytics,” Collins said in the press release. “The goal is simple: to help our warfighters and the organizations that support them operate smarter, faster, and more efficiently. There’s never been a more important time to serve those who serve.” 

Salesforce has held contracts with the U.S. government for years across federal agencies and multiple branches of the U.S. military including the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. The company doesn’t publicly disclose how many government contracts it has nor how much revenue it makes from them.  

This news is the latest in a wave of tech companies building and offering services specifically for the U.S. government.

OpenAI launched a version of its ChatGPT designed for U.S. government agencies in January. In August, the company announced it struck a deal with the government to give federal agencies access to its enterprise ChatGPT tier for just $1 a year.

Other companies quickly followed suit.  

A week later, Anthropic announced it was giving the U.S. government access to its government and enterprise tiers of its Claude chatbot for $1.  

Google announced “Gemini for Government” in late August which offers their AI services to federal agencies for 47 cents for the first year.