# Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. is an American enterprise software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, known for customer relationship management (CRM) software delivered via a software-as-a-service model, with products spanning sales, service, marketing, e-commerce, analytics, and artificial intelligence.

Salesforce, Inc. is an American enterprise software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is best known for customer relationship management (CRM) software and related applications, which the corporation delivers through a software as a service (SaaS) subscription business model. It also provides software for sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, data analytics, artificial intelligence, agentic AI, and application development.

Founded by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff in March 1999, Salesforce experienced rapid growth in the sector in which it competed, debuting its initial public offering in 2004. Its major acquisitions included Tableau and Slack. As of March 2026, Salesforce has a market capitalization of approximately US$186 billion. For fiscal year 2026 (ending January 31, 2026), the company reported record annual revenue of $41.5 billion. The company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (since 2020) and the S&P 500.

## History

Salesforce was founded on March 8, 1999, by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, together with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as a software-as-a-service company. The first prototype of Salesforce was launched in November 1999. Two of Salesforce's earliest investors were Larry Ellison, the co-founder and first CEO of Oracle, and Halsey Minor, the founder of CNET.

Salesforce was severely affected by the dot-com bubble bursting at the beginning of the new millennium, resulting in the company laying off 20% of its workforce. Despite its losses, Salesforce held up during the early 2000s. Salesforce also gained notability during this period for its "the end of software" tagline and marketing campaign, and even hired actors to hold up signs with its slogan outside a Siebel Systems conference. Salesforce's revenue continued to increase, moving from $5.4 million in 2000 to $22.4 million in 2001.

In 2003, Salesforce held its first annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. There were around 1,300 attendees and 50 exhibitors at the conference. In June 2004, the company had its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange (under the stock symbol CRM) and raised US$110 million. In 2006, Salesforce launched Idea Exchange, a platform that allows customers to connect with company product managers.

In 2009, Salesforce passed $1 billion in annual revenue. Also, in 2009, the company launched Service Cloud, an application that helps companies manage service conversations about their products and services. In 2014, the company released Trailhead, a free online learning platform for its products. In October 2014, Salesforce announced the development of its Customer Success Platform.

In September 2016, Salesforce announced the launch of Einstein, an artificial intelligence platform that supports several of Salesforce's cloud services. Salesforce licensed the right to use Albert Einstein's image and likeness from the Einstein Estate under a 20-year agreement for $20 million, restricted to business software applications.

Salesforce acquired the visual analytics and business intelligence software platform Tableau in August 2019 for $15.7 billion. In 2020, Salesforce joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing energy giant and Standard Oil-descendant ExxonMobil. Salesforce's ascension to the Dow Jones was concurrent with that of Amgen and Honeywell. Because the Dow Jones factors its components by market price, Salesforce was the largest technology component of the index at its accession.

Salesforce experienced significant leadership transitions between 2020 and 2021; Keith Block stepped down as co-CEO in February 2020, leaving Marc Benioff as sole chairman and CEO. In February 2021, Weaver, previously the chief legal officer, became CFO, where she served until stepping down in August 2024. Former CFO Mark Hawkins announced that he would be retiring in October. In November 2021, Bret Taylor was named vice chair and co-CEO of the company alongside Benioff.

In December 2020, Salesforce announced its acquisition of Slack for $27.7 billion, the largest in company history; the deal closed in July 2021. The purchase price represented a 54% premium over Slack's closing market capitalization at the announcement date, valued at approximately $18 billion. Salesforce justified the premium based on anticipated synergies from integrating Slack's messaging platform with its CRM services.

Salesforce launched the Sustainability Cloud (Net Zero Cloud as of 2022), which is used by companies to track progress towards achieving their net zero emissions goals. In April 2022, "Salesforce.com, Inc." changed its legal name to "Salesforce, Inc."

In August 2022, Salesforce surpassed SAP in total revenue and market capitalization to become the world's largest enterprise applications software company, according to industry analysis. The next month, Salesforce announced a partnership with Meta Platforms. The deal called for Meta's consumer application WhatsApp to integrate Salesforce's Customer 360 platform to allow consumers to communicate with companies directly.

In November 2022, Salesforce announced it would terminate some employees from its sales team. That same month, Salesforce announced its co-CEO and vice chair, Bret Taylor, would be stepping down from his roles at the end of January 2023, with Benioff continuing to run the company and serve as board chair. Within the week, former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson and former Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield also announced their departures. When asked about departures, Benioff stated, "people come and people go." Following these executive transitions, Salesforce's stock declined significantly, with market analysts attributing the decline to concerns about leadership stability and strategic continuity.

In January 2023, the company announced a layoff of about 10%, or approximately 8,000 positions. According to Benioff, the company hired too aggressively during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in working from home led to the layoff. The company also reduced office space as part of the restructuring plan. The same month brought an announcement from activist investor Elliott Management that it would acquire a "big stake" in the company.

In January 2024, Salesforce announced it was laying off 700 of its global staff. In October 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared his avid support of Donald Trump and urged him to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco as Trump was deploying federal troops to other cities. The comments generated significant controversy for Benioff and Salesforce, including push-back from San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and the resignation of Ron Conway from the Salesforce Foundation board. Benioff subsequently apologized for his National Guard comments. That same month, Salesforce pitched the Trump administration on ways that Salesforce's AI tools could help Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

## Products and Services

Salesforce's core offerings are organized around its Customer 360 platform, which integrates sales, service, marketing, commerce, and analytics applications. The flagship Sales Cloud manages leads, opportunities, and customer accounts. Service Cloud provides customer support and case management. Marketing Cloud enables campaign automation and customer journey orchestration. Commerce Cloud supports e-commerce operations. Data Cloud (formerly Customer Data Platform) unifies customer data across sources.

Einstein is Salesforce's artificial intelligence layer, embedded across its products. It uses [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) and [generative-ai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) to provide predictive analytics, automated recommendations, and natural language processing. In 2023, Salesforce introduced Einstein GPT, which integrates [large-language-model](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model) capabilities for generating personalized content and automating workflows. The company also offers Agentforce, an agentic AI platform that allows businesses to build autonomous AI agents for customer service and sales.

## Acquisitions and Partnerships

Salesforce has grown through strategic acquisitions. Beyond Tableau and Slack, notable purchases include ExactTarget (marketing automation, 2013), Demandware (e-commerce, 2016), MuleSoft (integration, 2018), and ClickSoftware (field service, 2019). These acquisitions expanded Salesforce's portfolio into adjacent markets.

Salesforce has partnered with major cloud providers, including [amazon-web-services](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/amazon-web-services), [azure](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/azure), and [google-cloud](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/google-cloud), to offer its services on multiple infrastructures. It also collaborates with [openai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/openai) and [anthropic](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/anthropic) to incorporate advanced AI models into its platform. In 2024, Salesforce announced a partnership with [google-cloud](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/google-cloud) to integrate its CRM with Google's AI and data tools.

## Corporate Affairs

Salesforce is headquartered in Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, a prominent skyscraper completed in 2018. The company has offices worldwide and employs over 70,000 people as of 2025. Its revenue model is subscription-based, with recurring contracts typically ranging from one to three years.

The company has faced criticism over its environmental impact, but it has committed to achieving net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2040. Salesforce also runs the Salesforce Foundation, which focuses on education and community engagement.

## Impact and Recognition

Salesforce is credited with popularizing the SaaS model for enterprise software, challenging traditional on-premise vendors. Its "No Software" slogan and Dreamforce conference have become industry landmarks. The company has been consistently ranked among Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" and is a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM.

Salesforce's AI initiatives have positioned it as a major player in the enterprise AI space, competing with [microsoft](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/microsoft) and [oracle-cloud](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/oracle-cloud). Its Einstein platform and Agentforce are used by thousands of organizations to automate processes and enhance customer interactions.

## Controversies

Salesforce has faced legal and ethical challenges. In 2020, employees protested the company's contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, leading Salesforce to end some work with the agency. In 2022, the company faced a lawsuit over alleged unfair labor practices. The 2025 political controversy involving Benioff's comments on the National Guard and ICE drew significant media attention and internal dissent.

## See Also

- customer-relationship-management
- software-as-a-service
- [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence)
- enterprise-software

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/salesforce
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-12T22:21:01.742762+00:00