Salesforce and Workday CEOs explain their new joint AI venture

In a Wednesday interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, the CEOs of Salesforce and Workday discussed their companies' new partnership to create an assistant powered by artificial intelligence.
Both CEOs said the strength of this venture stems from the confluence of their large data sets.

In an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, the CEOs of Salesforce and Workday, Marc Benioff and Carl Eschenbach, discussed their companies' new partnership. They announced Wednesday they would be teaming up to create artificial intelligence that can be used to help with onboarding and human resources, among other tasks.

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Both CEOs said the strength of this new venture stems from the confluence of their large data sets.

"AI is all about data, and if you have access to the data, then you can have phenomenal AI," Benioff said. "This is an example of two companies coming together to make sure our customers have the data they need to deliver this incredible vision of artificial intelligence."

Both Salesforce and Workday are cloud-based software companies. Salesforce is known for its Slack application, as well as programs focused on sales, customer service and marketing. Workday's services revolve around human resources, recruiting and workforce management.

Eschenbach said Salesforce and Workday have the three most important data sets in the enterprise — employee data, customer data and financial data. He also said the new program benefits customers because they don't have to move between platforms to access services.

"Through this new partnership and the data sharing we can do together, whether you're in Slack, whether you're in Workday, or whether you're actually in Salesforce, you can actually stay in those platforms and get access to each of the data sets that we have," Eschenbach said.