Salesforce AI Research launches AI Foundry to boost product innovation

Bengaluru: Salesforce AI Research has announced the launch of AI Foundry, an initiative focused on developing transformative AI innovation for the enterprise.

The Foundry brings together AI research, strategic customers, and academic partners to develop, test, and validate new AI capabilities designed to move from foundational research to product innovation faster.

As large language models (LLMs) mature, the gap between what a model can do in isolation and how a system is expected to perform in production has become a central challenge for enterprise adoption, Salesforce said.

“The problems that matter most for businesses don’t live at the model level anymore,” said Silvio Savarese, Chief Scientist at Salesforce. “They live at the system level, where components work together to deliver accuracy, consistency, and reliability at scale. AI Foundry is the engine we’ve built to make that a reality," Savarese said.

AI Foundry is focused on strategic areas where Salesforce AI Research sees the greatest opportunity for enterprise impact and that includes agents that interact on behalf of companies across organisational boundaries. AI Foundry has developed protocols, such as agent cards, and is continuing to invest in building an enterprise multi-agent semantic layer, with standardised protocols, guardrails, decision logging, and coordinated escalation.

'AI is increasing cloud dependency'

Meanwhile, NTT DATA in its latest report said that just 14% of organisations have reached the highest level of cloud maturity, despite nearly decades of cloud adoption. The findings highlight that while 99% of organisations say AI is increasing demand for cloud investment, 88% say current cloud investment levels are putting AI, cloud-native and modernisation initiatives at risk. While cloud is seen as essential for innovation, fewer than half of the organisations are satisfied with its impact or with their modernisation progress. This signals a disconnect between ambition and reality as expectations rise.

NTT DATA outlines that organisations must reimagine how they drive business value with modern applications. Despite widespread agreement that cloud should drive innovation, half say legacy applications and data platforms are holding it back. Modernisation is the top priority for the next two years, it said.

“AI is accelerating faster than enterprise cloud maturity,” said Charlie Li, President, Global Head of Cloud and Security, NTT DATA. “Cloud has moved well-beyond infrastructure and is now the execution layer for AI. Organisations that fail to evolve their cloud foundations risk constraining the growth and value of their AI investments," Li said.