Salesforce AWU Metric Draws CIO Backlash: 'Conflates Doing Work With Achieving Outcomes'

CIO·high signal

Despite Salesforce reporting Agentforce at $800M ARR with 29K deals and 2.4B Agentic Work Units processed, the AWU metric is drawing sharp criticism from CIOs and analysts. CIO.com calls it 'a shiny new metric that tells CIOs little of value,' while CustomerThink labels it 'the new Bad Query of the AI Era.' Core criticism: AWU counts triggered workflows and API calls regardless of whether the agent resolved the issue correctly — tracking activity, not quality. This backlash is significant because Salesforce is trying to define the pricing lingua franca for AI agents, and the market is rejecting it in favor of outcome-based metrics like HubSpot's model.