Salesforce ramps up agentic AI research with new foundry project

Salesforce has announced the launch of a new AI Foundry service aimed at accelerating agentic AI research.

Through the service, the company hopes to ramp up internal AI development and testing, moving from “foundational research to product innovation faster than ever before”.

This, Salesforce noted, will have a downstream benefit for customers, enabling it to roll out more intuitive and powerful AI solutions.

The AI Foundry will see researchers collaborate closely with “strategic customers” and academic partners to develop and test new AI tools and capabilities.

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“Many of the old rulebooks simply don’t apply anymore,” said Itai Asseo, VP of Salesforce AI Research.

“AI Foundry connects foundational research to real business problems by collaborating closely with our strategic customers in rapid iteration cycles.”

Targeted AI innovation

The new AI Foundry will focus primarily on areas where the company sees the “greatest opportunity for enterprise impact”.

This includes simulated environments for testing agents based on real-world best practices and learnings. Indeed, researchers have already developed eVerse, a simulation environment that “exposes agents to thousands of edge cases, handoffs, and judgment calls”.

The aim here is to assess agent performance and consistency, and the tool has been used to stress-test Agentforce Voice using thousands of simulated conversations.

“Ambient intelligence” is another key focus area for the new foundry project, according to Salesforce, helping test agents that “disappear into the environment”.

These are essentially agents that are always on that enterprises can trust to work quietly behind the scenes without the need for repeated commands.

“Ambient intelligence is context-aware, proactive, and timely. It understands the full situation, anticipates needs before they emerge, and surfaces just-in-time insights,” the company explained in a blog post.

The AI Foundry is currently experimenting with ambient intelligence capabilities, with the eventual goal of embedding this within enterprise workflows to help aid workers on the go.

Agent ecosystem building

Another key area of focus for the new AI Foundry lies in agent-to-agent interactions, according to Salesforce, including those that act “across organizational boundaries”.

Researchers are developing rules and protocols aimed at governing cross-boundary agentic ecosystems, for example. This includes agent cards, which are essentially a “business card” for each individual agent, the company noted in a 2025 blog post.

These help enterprises establish whether a third-party agent interacting with their own internal tools is legitimate, and what it's designed for.

“Working with Salesforce’s legal council, as well as with the Office of Ethical Use of Technology, our research team is defining the legal frameworks required for autonomous agent negotiation,” Salesforce said.

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