Earlier this week, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) reported its quarterly results, surpassing market expectations. For a while now, Salesforce has been targeting to become the first $10 billion cloud services company. Recent outlook reveals that the milestone may not be too far off now.

Salesforce’s Financials

For the final quarter of 2016, Salesforce’s revenue grew 27% over the year to $2.29 billion, above analyst projections of $2.28 billion. EPS of $0.28 was also significantly ahead of the market’s forecast of $0.25 for the quarter.

By segment, Subscription and Support revenues grew 25% to $2.11 billion and professional services and other revenues were grew 45% to $183 million. For the quarter, unbilled deferred revenue, the amount of business booked but not yet recognized, grew 27% to $9 billion.

Salesforce ended the year with revenues growing 26% to $8.39 billion. Subscription and support revenues increased 25% to $7.76 billion and professional services and other revenues grew 38% to $636 million. For the full fiscal year it reported an EPS of $0.26.

For the current year, Salesforce expects revenues of $2.34-$2.35 billion with an EPS of $0.25-$0.26. The market was looking for revenues of $2.365 billion and an EPS of $0.30. Salesforce expects to end the current year with revenues of $10.15-$10.2 billion and an EPS of $1.27-$1.29, thus achieving its goal of becoming the first $10 billion cloud services company. The Street had forecast revenues of $10.18 billion for the year with an EPS of $1.28.

Salesforce’s AI Growth

Salesforece believes that the next round of growth will be in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, and it is focusing on the segment. Salesforce is not the only tech giant to recognize the importance of AI. For instance, IBM has its Watson and Microsoft (MSFT) is also improving its AI capabilities. Last year, Salesforce announced plans to release its AI offering Einstein to users. Einstein is being developed as an integral part of Salesforce’s core platform and not as a standalone product so that all Salesforce users will be able to access its benefits.