Salesforce, the same company you probably associate with sales dashboards, customer pipelines, and endless CRM demos, just announced it’s taking things to a whole new battlefield — literally. On Tuesday, the cloud giant revealed a brand-new business unit called Missionforce, designed to bring AI muscle into defense operations. But before you picture robots in camo, let’s break it down: Missionforce will focus on three very human (and very critical) areas — personnel, logistics, and decision-making.
Leading this charge is Kendall Collins, who joined Salesforce in 2023 and currently serves as Chief Business Officer and Chief of Staff to CEO Marc Benioff. Now, Collins is stepping up as the general (pun intended) of Missionforce. His mission statement? Pretty bold: “We’re bringing the best of AI, cloud, and platform tech to modernize personnel, logistics, and analytics. The ultimate goal is simple — help the people who serve operate smarter, faster, and more efficiently.” Translation: less paperwork, more precision, and ideally fewer 1990s-style systems that require 14 clicks to open one file.
This move isn’t exactly out of nowhere. Salesforce has been in the government game for a while now, with contracts across U.S. federal agencies and military branches — Army, Navy, Air Force, you name it. They don’t brag about the numbers, though, so the exact revenue from Uncle Sam stays classified.
And Salesforce isn’t the only one going government mode. Earlier this year, OpenAI rolled out a ChatGPT specifically for U.S. agencies, offering access to its enterprise tier for just $1 (yep, cheaper than a vending machine snack). A week later, Anthropic jumped in with a similar deal for Claude. Then in August, Google unveiled Gemini for Government, priced at a jaw-dropping 47 cents for year one.
So yeah, the AI arms race for government contracts is heating up fast. With Missionforce, Salesforce is making it clear: this isn’t just about CRMs anymore — it’s about becoming mission-critical.
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