Salesforce’s Mohammed AlKhotani on the Adaption and Future of AI
In an exclusive interview with TECHPULSE at Agentforce World Tour Dubai 2026, Salesforce’s Vice President and GM for Middle East discusses how businesses can turn AI into measurable value, build trust in AI agents, prepare for a changing workplace and the future of AI in Middle East.
As businesses across the Middle East accelerate their investments in artificial intelligence, the challenge is shifting from adopting the technology to proving its value. For Mohammed AlKhotani, the problem is not a lack of interest in AI, but how organisations approach its implementation.
“People hear about AI, and any budget that sits on any board gets approved,” AlKhotani told TECHPULSE Media in an exclusive interview at Salesforce Agentforce World Tour Dubai on Wednesday. “The real challenge is how you approach this from a business perspective.”
AlKhotani argued that many organisations are allowing the pressure to keep pace with AI developments to dictate their investment decisions, often before establishing what they want the technology to achieve. The result, he said, can be expensive infrastructure and AI models that fail to deliver meaningful business outcomes.
He cited figures from a study discussed during the interview, saying that 95% of organisations had an AI strategy, but only 8% were realising value from their investments. The figures, which he did not identify by study name, underline what he sees as a gap between AI ambition and practical execution.
Rather than beginning with the technology, AlKhotani said businesses should first reconsider how they serve customers, manage operations and deliver products and services.
“Reimagine the whole customer journey,” he said. “How will this look like in five years? Who can get me there? What do I need to do, and what do I need to build?”
For Salesforce, the shift towards agentic AI centres on systems that can carry out tasks and workflows, rather than simply generate responses to user prompts. The company is positioning its Agentforce platform as part of this transition, allowing businesses to deploy AI agents within their operations.
AlKhotani pointed to customer service as an area where the financial benefits could be more immediate. He described how AI agents could filter incoming requests, identify spam and route legitimate enquiries to the appropriate teams, reducing the time employees spend processing routine interactions.
He said that cutting more than 30% of inbound traffic through this approach could deliver significant savings for organisations handling thousands of service requests each day.
But technology alone, he cautioned, will not guarantee those results.
“Technology can make any scenario in your case work but how people really carry this on their shoulders and how they really reimagine their customer journey will determine whether organisations realise the intended value.” AlKhotani said.
That distinction places change management alongside technical implementation as a central concern for business leaders. Organisations must be prepared to redesign processes rather than simply automate existing ones, he argued.
Trust remains central to autonomous AI
As AI agents gain the ability to access enterprise systems and take action, governance becomes increasingly important. AlKhotani said businesses need confidence that AI-generated recommendations are based on reliable information and operate within established corporate policies.
He pointed to Salesforce’s approach to a trust layer that enables AI agents to work with an organisation’s data, systems and processes while remaining subject to its rules and controls.
Before introducing AI into decision-making, he said, businesses must ensure their underlying data is accurate, clean and properly governed.
“I have my data right, I have my systems and processes right, and I have the AI reading from those facts,” he said, describing the foundations required for organisations to trust AI-generated decisions.
The challenge is particularly relevant for large enterprises, where employees and AI agents must operate within shared compliance requirements. An individual may be free to make decisions independently, but an AI agent acting on behalf of a larger organisation must follow defined policies and permissions.
AlKhotani also pointed to Salesforce’s work with Anthropic as an example of combining AI capabilities with enterprise systems. The objective, he explained, is to allow AI models to work with an organisation’s own data rather than operate in isolation from its business context.
The Middle East’s public sector is raising expectations
AlKhotani believes the Middle East has particular advantages in accelerating AI adoption, partly because digital government services have raised expectations of speed and convenience.
He cited platforms such as DubaiNow in the UAE and Absher in Saudi Arabia, where people can complete government transactions digitally, often within minutes.
When citizens become accustomed to efficient digital services, he argued, they expect a similar experience from private businesses.
“If the must-have things are done this fast without me asking, how are the good things to happen?” he said, describing how expectations around convenience and responsiveness are changing.
For companies operating in retail, real estate, travel and hospitality, that shift creates pressure to provide more personalised and proactive customer experiences.
AlKhotani highlighted Aldar as an example of the scale at which agentic AI could be applied. He described the real estate group’s operations across more than 165,000 units, spanning customer needs and services connected to residential communities and wider developments.
Managing such a broad customer ecosystem, he suggested, offers an opportunity to connect different stages of the customer journey through AI-powered services.
Salesforce’s regional strategy, he said, places emphasis on engineering expertise and putting practical AI applications into operation. AlKhotani noted that almost 40% of his team comprises engineers, reflecting the importance of technical capabilities in moving beyond experimentation to real-world deployment.
However, he returned to the need for a business-led approach. Companies should identify the customer experience they want to deliver, determine which processes need to change and then select the technology and partners capable of supporting that ambition.
Salesforce puts engineering at the centre of expansion
Salesforce is increasing its focus on engineering and practical implementation as it expands its regional business, AlKhotani said.
He noted that engineers now account for almost 40% of his regional team, reflecting the importance he places on developing use cases and moving AI agents into live business environments.
At the Dubai event, he said, the demonstrations were designed to show how the technology works in practice rather than simply present high-level product messaging.
“I need to invest in those engineers, because I believe that’s the source of the truth,” he said, adding that stronger engineering capabilities and more practical use cases would help customers deploy AI agents faster.
His comments reflect a broader challenge for technology providers in the region: moving beyond AI demonstrations to implementations that can be integrated into existing systems and deliver measurable outcomes.
For businesses, that means evaluating technology partners not only on their products but also on their ability to connect systems, understand operational requirements and support deployment.
AI will change jobs, not just tasks
The implications extend beyond technology budgets and customer service. AlKhotani expects agentic AI to reshape how employees spend their time, with routine administrative work increasingly handled by digital agents.
He argued that while some existing roles may disappear or change significantly, new roles will emerge around AI enablement, implementation and the redesign of business processes.
The objective, he said, should be to free employees from repetitive work so they can focus on more strategic activities and provide a higher level of customer service.
Describing an example shared during the event, he said a customer had discussed shutting down a call centre, not as a straightforward exercise in eliminating jobs, but as part of a shift towards analysing customer cases, improving service and anticipating future needs.
“Teams should be looking at this, not to answer a phone or reply to an email,” he said. “This now can be a source of agency.”
In his view, employees should increasingly use customer data to understand what people need before they ask, personalise their experiences and make more informed decisions.
That transition will require businesses to reconsider workforce planning and the skills they value. Technical knowledge will remain important, but employees who can interpret data, understand customers and work effectively alongside AI systems will also become increasingly valuable.
A future in which AI agents talk to AI agents
Looking five years ahead, AlKhotani expects AI agents to interact directly with one another across businesses and services.
He envisages personal AI assistants operating through smartphones and wearable devices, communicating with agents belonging to property companies, airlines and banks to complete tasks on behalf of individuals.
Rather than navigating multiple applications and customer service channels, people could give instructions to a personal agent that coordinates the necessary interactions across different organisations.
“We’ll live in a world where agents will be speaking to agents,” he said, describing a future in which AI could handle more of the administrative work that currently occupies people’s time.
He believes that transition could help people focus on activities that require greater judgement, creativity and human interaction.
For organisations across the Middle East, however, reaching that point will require more than adopting the latest AI tools. It will depend on the quality of their data, the strength of their governance, the readiness of their employees and their willingness to rethink how the business operates.
AlKhotani’s central message to business leaders is that the race to adopt AI should not become a race to spend on technology. Those that begin with a clear business objective, he argued, will be better positioned to turn AI investment into lasting value.
