Salesforce May Gain as IT Budgets Tilt Toward AI, While Adobe Faces Pressure

Corporate technology budgets are moving, and analysts expect the change to sort software companies into clear winners and losers. As more of the money set aside for software goes toward AI-powered tools, investors are asking which vendors are positioned to capture that spending and which could see their existing products lose ground.

Salesforce is among the names analysts see as better placed. Its platform already sits at the center of how many companies manage customer records, sales pipelines and service work. The argument is that adding AI features on top of that data and those workflows lets the company deepen relationships it already has, rather than winning new customers from scratch. Businesses that run their operations inside the platform have a clear reason to keep expanding what they buy.

Adobe's outlook is more cautious. Its creative software has long been a standard tool for designers, marketers and video editors, but generative AI tools that produce images, video and copy from a short prompt could reduce how much users depend on traditional subscriptions. The concern is less about an immediate revenue drop than about whether Adobe can hold its pricing power as newer competitors offer similar output more cheaply.

These are analyst views, not reported results, and shifts in IT budgets tend to play out over several quarters. Share prices can also move ahead of the underlying business. Investors weighing either company would likely look at upcoming earnings guidance, customer retention figures and how much revenue each company is actually attributing to its AI products.