SAN FRANCISCO, Databricks Data + AI Summit ’26 — Salesforce, the #1 Agentic CRM, today announced an expanded partnership with Databricks, the data and AI company, to help organizations securely connect enterprise data with the customer relationships, permissions, approvals, and workflows required to drive trusted outcomes.
As organizations deploy AI agents across the enterprise, they face a growing challenge: the data needed to power analytics and AI is often disconnected from the business context, security controls, and enterprise processes required to act on it. Without that complete picture, AI can generate recommendations but lacks the permissions context to know what data they’re authorized to use, what actions they’re allowed to take, and how to execute within enterprise security and sharing models.
Together, Salesforce and Databricks help close that gap. The expanded partnership helps organizations connect enterprise data with the business context needed for humans and AI agents to make decisions and execute with confidence.
Creating a Shared Foundation for Human and Agent Work
AI agents can only be as effective as the context they operate within. They must understand what data they are authorized to access, what actions they are permitted to take, and how those actions fit within existing business processes and governance controls.
“Customers consistently tell us they want AI agents to become a larger part of how work gets done across the enterprise. To make this a reality, they need access to trusted data, business context, and governance controls wherever that information lives,” said Andy Kofoid, President, Global Field Operations, Databricks. “Together, Salesforce and Databricks are helping joint customers connect governed data and business context across platforms, giving humans and agents the shared foundation they need to search, reason, and act with confidence.”
To create this shared foundation for human and agent work, Salesforce and Databricks are expanding their partnership across three key areas:
Governed Business Context
Building on the existing Zero Copy partnership, between Salesforce Data 360 and Databricks Unity Catalog, Salesforce and Databricks are introducing new governance capabilities that solve a persistent enterprise challenge: when data lives across multiple platforms, security rules, identities, and permissions have to be recreated for each system. This creates gaps that slow teams down and expose organizations to risk. New capabilities including Federated Authentication, with planned identity mapping, governance interoperability, and metadata-aware access controls, are designed to help users and AI agents operate with more consistent security and compliance controls across Salesforce and Databricks.
These capabilities help extend governance across Salesforce and Databricks, making it easier to apply consistent permissions, policies, and trust controls across platforms. As a result, organizations can deploy AI-powered workflows and agent experiences more quickly while maintaining consistent security, compliance, and access controls.
Organizations are already seeing the value of connecting enterprise data, governance, and operational context across Salesforce and Databricks:
“Salesforce and Databricks help us bring together fan data from across our business into a trusted foundation for AI. With that context, our teams and agents can better understand each fan, recommend the next best action, and create more personalized experiences across every interaction.” — Joey Graziano, Chief Commercial Officer at Pacers Sports & Entertainment
“Zero copy is very attractive to us because it’s easier and less expensive than ingesting the data again and landing it in multiple spots,” Carlos Gonzalez, Domain Architect, FedEx
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