More than 43,000 people are expected to gather at Moscone Center this week for Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference.
KGO-TV
BySuzanne Phan
Monday, September 14, 2026 3:13AM
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) –More than 43,000 people are expected to gather at Moscone Center this week for Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference. Artificial intelligence and AI agents will be at the center of discussion, even as some industry leaders call for slower development of the technology.
Attendees began arriving in San Francisco ahead of the conference, which officially starts Tuesday. Around Moscone Center, roads were closed and hotels and restaurants prepared for what organizers describe as the city’s largest conference of the year.
Artificial intelligence has emerged as the dominant topic heading into the event.
Among those arriving early was Scott Stafford, a Dreamforce attendee who said he has attended the conference eight times and is enthusiastic about advances in AI.
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“I love the tech. I love Claude. I use AI all over the place. Salesforce and Claude force are going to be amazing,” Stafford said.
Other attendees traveled from around the world to take part in discussions about AI and its growing role in business.
“We also have AI capital in Switzerland. So, I’m looking forward to what’s coming,” said attendee Tecla Solari, who works in the AI industry.
The conference comes as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for an industrywide slowdown in the development of advanced AI capabilities.
“The amazing thing they are saying is they need to slow down the growth of AI and the development of AI,” said Yashas Hariprasad, a computer science professor.
Hariprasad said concerns surrounding increasingly capable AI systems deserve attention.
“Of course it is concerning that they are talking about agentic AI and development of agentic AI. But I do think there is a need for them to slow down as well,” he said.
One of the most anticipated events of the conference is expected to be a conversation between Benioff and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, focused on “Advancing the AI Frontier” and its use for business tools.
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Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, described the current moment in artificial intelligence as transformative.
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“This is one of these moments in history. There has been a paradigm shift occurring,” Goldberg said.
He pointed to recent advances in AI capabilities.
“The progress of AI has changed in last couple weeks. That has now shown dramatic improvements,” Goldberg said.
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Despite the calls for caution from some industry leaders, attendees expressed optimism about AI’s potential.
“There are dangers, but there are a lot of opportunities as well. It’s up to us to make it right,” Solari said.
Dreamforce organizers have described the planned discussion between the Salesforce and OpenAI CEOs as “a one-of-a-kind conversation,” though details about when it will take place during the conference had not been announced.
As thousands of attendees converge on San Francisco, Dreamforce is poised to serve as a major forum for both the promise of AI and the debate over how quickly the technology should advance.
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