Bank of America Double‑Upgrades Salesforce to Buy, Raises Target 78% to $285, Stock Jumps 3%

Bank of America Securities analyst Tal Liani upgraded CRM on Monday, Oct. 12, from Underperform straight to Buy, skipping Neutral in a rare double upgrade, and raised his price target to $285 from $160, a 78% increase. Investing.com put the new target about 24% above the prior close of $229.13. Salesforce shares rose about 3% on the call, with intraday gains reported between 3.5% and 5% as the stock traded around $237 to $239.

The call reverses the bank's May 18 downgrade to Underperform, which also carried a $160 target and rested on worries that revenue growth could slow to about 10% a year and that early Agentforce monetization was weak. The pivot is in how BofA reads AI risk. Its earlier concern was AI-driven disintermediation, the idea that AI agents would route around systems of record. After conversations with CIOs, Liani concluded that large enterprises are unlikely to replace platforms that house their business logic, data and workflows, and that AI should deepen dependence on them, according to TheFly. CNBC framed the note as an AI pivot that could drive the shares higher.

The upgrade lands on a stock that had lagged: Salesforce was down about 13% year to date before Monday, according to Crypto Briefing, as investors treated application software as a likely AI casualty. Liani also pointed to improving Agentforce monetization trends and the Winter '27 release, which widens Agentforce availability inside existing workflows.

What to watch: whether Agentforce revenue becomes visible enough in upcoming results to support the thesis, and whether other brokers that turned cautious on the disintermediation argument follow BofA. A target this far above the current price leaves the call exposed if AI adoption inside enterprises proves slower than the CIO checks suggest.