Salesforce Stock Just Soared. Thank Anthropic.

CRM surged 23% following fiscal second-quarter 2027 earnings that delivered adjusted EPS of $5.90, though $2.53 of that figure came from investment gains rather than software operations. The company booked a $2.7 billion unrealized gain on its $5.1 billion stake in AI firm Anthropic, accounting for nearly half the headline earnings number.

Stripping out investment gains, CRM's core software business grew adjusted earnings per share roughly 16% year-over-year. The company also unveiled Claudeforce, a partnership integrating Anthropic's Claude AI directly into the Salesforce platform. The collaboration addresses investor concerns that generative AI could disrupt or disintermediate Salesforce's core customer relationship management business by instead positioning the company as a distribution partner for frontier AI models.

The sharp distinction between reported and operational earnings highlights the outsized impact of CRM's venture bets. The Anthropic stake, valued at $5.1 billion, now represents a material driver of near-term EPS volatility tied to private AI valuations rather than recurring software revenue.