Google and Salesforce Inc. are ratcheting up the heat on Microsoft Corp when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Salesforce $(CRM)$ and Google $(GOOGL)$(GOOGL)announced an expanded partnership at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco that more tightly integrates data and context from Salesforce to Google Workspace in an "open platform," according to Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian. Google Workspace includes Google Calendar, Docs, Meet and Gmail.
The word "open" was uttered several times by Kurian and David Schmaier, Salesforce's chief product officer, during a joint interview -- a not-too-subtle dig at rival Microsoft $(MSFT)$, which has invested more than $10 billion in startup OpenAI and has partnered with Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. (META) on generative AI.
The move by Google and Salesforce on Tuesday is part of an all-out land rush among tech's biggest players to tap into the booming generative-AI market, considered the richest opportunity in the industry since cloud computing. But the intensity over generative AI, and its potential to upend the economy and society as a whole, has led to calls for regulation or some form of government oversight.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, is hosting an inaugural AI Insight Forum on Capitol Hill Wednesday, bringing together some of the biggest names in tech to help lawmakers understand the technology and how to regulate it. Tesla Inc. $(TSLA)$ CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are among those scheduled to appear.
For now, it is a sprint for the likes of Google, Microsoft and Salesforce on the AI front. "We're bringing context from both models together in an open AI approach," Kurian said in an interview. The open AI approach, he added, does not force customers to switch between the companies' platforms.
"This deep integration between Salesforce and Google Workspace, where many users spend much of their day," will speed up tasks such as sales and marketing, Schmaier said.
The deal builds on a partnership between the tech titans that was unveiled in June, when Salesforce and Google Cloud announced they were teaming up to help businesses leverage data and AI. The partnership covers products and services that include Google's BigQuery tooling, Salesforce's Data Cloud and Google's AI platform, Vertex AI.
