Salesforce Einstein turns one with a bevy of new features

Salesforce's Einstein artificial intelligence platform celebrates its one-year anniversary this week and the CRM giant is marking the occasion with the launch of several new features.

The new Einstein Forecasting feature uses data mining and machine learning to help sales team leaders make detailed sales projections. Salesforce said the feature is a breakthrough innovation that "uses special logic to translate the data behind each forecast into human language so sales leaders know what to expect from the pipeline and why."

Salesforce also added a feature for opportunity scoring that helps sales teams identify, surface, and prioritize the most valuable deals in the sales pipeline. The idea is to help sales reps focus on the deals most likely to close and those that may be at risk.

The third feature is called email insights, and it's supposed to prioritize the most important emails in your inbox. It essentially acts like an email assistant to make the inbox more efficient, with action and response recommendations powered by natural language processing.

"As we celebrate our first year of Salesforce Einstein, we're excited to introduce the next generation of Sales Cloud Einstein, an unparalleled sales platform," said Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM of the Salesforce Sales Cloud. "Now, equipped with predictive and intelligent capabilities, Sales Cloud Einstein has cracked the traditionally flawed forecasting model, bringing AI to every step of the sales cycle."

Salesforce also announced the launch of a $50 million venture fund that will invest in startups focused on artificial intelligence. The fund is via Salesforce Ventures and it will encourage companies to build AI capabilities on the Salesforce platform, thereby making Einstein more powerful.

Salesforce Ventures has invested more than $700 million in funding to over 250 startups since launching in 2009, Salesforce said. Similarly, Intel also revealed this week that it's funneled significant investment money -- more than $1 billion -- into AI startups.

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