Salesforce's Einstein deep learning platform aims to bring AI to the masses

Salesforce.com Inc.'s plans to enhance its sales and marketing software with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities were first leaked by company CEO Marc Benioff several weeks ago. But yesterday's unveiling of Salesforce Einstein still caught everyone by surprise, stealing the show from rival firm Oracle Corp. just hours before its annual Oracle OpenWorld tech conference kicked off with Larry Ellison's keynote. Salesforce has managed to upstage Oracle in spectacular fashion with the announcement of Einstein, a new deep learning platform that the company says will become the foundation of all of its future Software-as-a-Service offerings. The platform, which was years in the making and supposedly cost hundreds of millions of dollars through a combination of acquisitions and in-house development, will be baked into just about every Salesforce product there is, with packages available for Sales, Service, Marketing, Analytics, Commerce, Community and IoT. Einstein will be added to some products for free, while others will be charged as add-ons, the company said.