June 27, 2025 • 31 mins
Emily Chang meets Salesforce Co-Founder & CEO Marc Benioff in his home city of San Francisco to discuss the rise of AI agents and what it’s like to run a very memeable global tech company.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Emily Chek and this is the podcast version of
the Circuit my show on Bloomberg Originals. There's one building
that rises above the rest of the San Francisco skyline.
It's home to a software giant whose story begins somewhere
more tropical.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I heard something.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Did you really come up with the idea for Salesforce
while you were swimming with dolphins? And?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Fright? Did I did I do a great dolphin imitation?
Did you know that? Can you?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
How do they respond?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This is Mark Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce, the
world's number one customer relationship management or CRM software provider.
They sell cloud based business tools for sales, marketing, e commerce,
all that good stuff. It might sound niche, but their
clients include the likes of Apple, Boeing, Amazon, and more
than one hundred and fifty thousand companies. Benioff has been
(00:55):
called a master networker, a force of nature, mister disruptor,
and the fresh of software. Let's just say subtlety isn't
really his thing. At its core, this is a story
all about software. A self taught teenage programmer turned visionary
tech billionaire, and believe it or not, it all starts
with a customer service job. In nineteen eighty six, you
(01:16):
could find Benioff answering customer calls at a not so
little future competitor called Oracle, under the wing of longtime
CEO Larry Ellison. Benioff's snack for sales took him straight
to the top. Today, Benioff is all in on the
AI boom with a new product, AI Agents, a digital
workforce to autonomously complete tasks. He isn't the only one
(01:37):
betting big on agentic AI, but true to form, he's
all in.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Good to fore you.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Thanks for having us here. We are back in the
Ohanna room.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Welcome back, Thank you, Ohanna.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm so happy to have you. I know you know
what jwhana means great? How do you know that it means?
How do you know what ohana means?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm from Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You're Hawaii? Are you a native Hawaiian?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm a Kamma.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Were you born in Hawaiian?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was born in Hawaii, born and raised. And you
love Hawaii?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I love Hawaii too.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But next time, if we do this, I want my
ties on the Big Island.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Deal.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Come over.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I've interviewed you many times from your false cloud days,
many many dream forces. But I want to go back
a bit to young Mark growing up in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yes, Young Mark, right.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So, your parents ran department stores. You grew up your
first job was cleaning.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Jewelry Beniof's department store.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Benioff's department stores. Who was Mark Benioff before Mark Benioff?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Do I even exist? Is this an existential thing? Should
I bring in some spiritual.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
But seriously, tell me about you as a kid.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I was born right there, yeah, literally about six blocks
away at Mount Zion Hospital, UCSF, now right onto Visadero Street,
nineteen sixty four, sixty years ago, and I grew up
right there for two years. Then I moved right there
for a while, and then I went to college right
(03:05):
down there. So this is your hood and this is
where I, Yeah, I feel very comfortable here.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You basically invented the SaaS industry software as a service
and made it possible for everything from Netflix to Spotify
to businesses at Google and Microsoft.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
What sparked the entrepreneur in you?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I don't know what sparked the entrepreneur because certainly my
family was entrepreneurial in the Benioff Department stores. On the
other side of my family. My grandfather was a supervisor
and worked right there in City Hall, and he also
was an attorney at six ninety Market Street right there,
and we used to walk right back and forth there,
(03:45):
and he was doing civic leadership, and my father was
a retailer selling clothing, so it was two different worlds.
And then what happened was I was just fifteen years old.
I was cleaning jewelry cases not so far away from here,
in a jewelry store, doing a lot of very hard work,
like cleaning the floors. I remembered really well polishing the cases.
(04:08):
And I walked across the street to a radio shack store,
which doesn't really exist anymore, and I found a computer,
and in that computer I became fascinated as a fifteen
year old, and I taught myself how to program, and
from then I bought other computers kind of based on
this income from this jewelry store. And my grandmother would
(04:29):
say to me, listen, I'll match you, and which was
very exciting. Yeah, the computer was four nine oh of dollars,
so I made two hundred and fifty dollars. She matched
two hundred and fifty dollars I bought the computer. I
sold my first piece of software when I was about fifteen,
called how to Juggle, to a little software reseller in
Santa Barbara, and then I leveraged that into an Apple
(04:54):
Too computer. I didn't like that. I sold that to
a friend of mine who's now our chief technology off
are here, who I've worked with for forty five years,
and that was that.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The rest is history. You founded the company now twenty
five years ago.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
So you've seen the rise of mobile and social and
the cloud and now AI.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
How has the CEO job changed for you?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, the CEO chop is really changing fast because it
used to be I felt very alone at the top.
But now like I just finished writing the business plan
for this year, and I always do that with someone else.
I take one of our executives, And for the last
three years, I've also found a new partner in AI,
(05:37):
and I bring AI in and I have an AI partner.
So I have an AI partner, I have a human partner,
and it's the three of us who are writing the
plan together, so it's a little less lonely at the top.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
You said you'll have a billion agents on salesforce before
the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yes, are you on track? What are they doing? I mean,
will they be doing?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Remarkably on track because we now have about five thousand
customers deploying this and it's amazing how many agents we
see getting spawned every year. We're tracking very closely how
these conversations are growing, so week by week we're looking
at how are the conversations growing, and it's amazing. So
I think it's going to be incredible. I mean, by far,
(06:15):
it's the fastest growing, most exciting thing we've ever done.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
You've thrown around this term AI nirvana.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
What is that? When do we get there? And how
do we know? What won't feel like?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Hell?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well, I mean, nobody exactly knows what's going to happen
when we get to this next level of AI. I
can tell you in the current level of AI, between
this combination of large language models and these new reasoning
models and where we are, we're able to provide this
kind of digital labor revolution. It's an opportunity for our
customers to improve productivity without hiring more employees, and to
(06:49):
let them redeploy existing employees into functions that need more attention,
more growth. I'm doing it myself. It's amazing, and that's
really important because it's hard to hire right now, isn't
as many people available. Unemployment is remarkably low. Interesting, so
you know, we have a point where we're going to
be able to add in digital labor in addition to
(07:11):
physical labor, so productivity itself will improve.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You bought the name Einstein, he's the face of your AI,
but how smart are these agents really?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Ten years ago we had the vision that AI would
surround us, and we bought that Einstein name, or really
licensed it. You know, you can't really buy his name,
but we licensed it for artificial intelligence because we really
believed that this is where we were going to end up,
in this incredible place, which is why this week we'll
probably do about a trillion Einstein transactions for all of
(07:42):
our customers around the world just this week. Yeah, and
now it's evolving into agent force, this idea that it's
these agents, these digital laborers, digital employees who are out
there doing this work, servicing the customer, selling the customer,
marketing to the customer, partnering with me to help run
the company, partnering with me to do the analytics partnering
(08:05):
with me to help do the marketing, the branding. So
that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So what do you think Einstein would think? Would Einstein
be proud?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think Einstein would be using AI in his work,
There's no question. You know, he could have his insights,
his capabilities and then probably would validate them using AI.
Yesterday I was with a Nobel Prize laureate who has
received this incredible Nobel Prize for his work in proteomics,
and then he's envisioning now how he's designing new drugs
(08:34):
using AI. I mean that is a leap that we
didn't think any of us a lot that we would
get there as quickly as we are, and now we
can see that scientists have all types. So yes, Einstein
or whoever is going to have the ability to go faster,
be more productive. Because of this capability, you're just able
to do more.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
How secure is all this?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I mean there's malicious code, there's hallucinations.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
What are the risks for businesses?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Well, those are two different things. I think security and
hallucinations are just slightly different. So security, there's no finish line.
We're in a world of cryptography and changes to cryptography
and the security issues, and you can never have extreme
confidence on security, you have to be completely paranoid. Hallucinations
is a different story. That is because of the nature
(09:23):
of the models that we're using right now. They're called
large language models, combined with these reasoning models, these two
things together and kind of the current state of the
art of AI is not one hundred percent accurate. And
you know that because anyone who's used any of these things,
so wait a minute, that's not well, like everybody probably
puts their name in and goes, wait, that's not me,
or that's not my exact bio.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Doesn't it get messier.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
It could get a lot more accurate. It could get
more accurate because the models themselves are stacking their intelligence,
so hopefully they're honing what the truth is, and that's
the hope. Right now, it's not one hundred percent accurate.
In our own work. We're doing hundreds of thousands of
conversations just ourselves and our company with our customers, and
(10:09):
we have about ninety three percent accuracy. Even for a
large brand or a large company that we work with,
like Disney, it's about ninety three percent. It's not one
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Ninety three percent though, that's not good enough, is it.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
It's pretty good. You're able to do a lot, but
you have to be realistic that we're not at one hundred.
You'll never see me saying that we're at one hundred percent.
But I think for a lot of the other vendors
maybe they're at much lower levels because they don't have
as much data and metadata and they're not able to
kind of put as much information into the model to
get to a higher level of accuracy.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You started out as a coder at Apple in nineteen
eighty four. Thank you were an intern in the Mac division.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Well, hey, you've done your homework.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I have done my homework here in twenty twenty five,
though you've said you won't hire any more coders, Well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You're right. When I was fifteen, I was writing that
software on that Tierrasad. Then it became an Apple too,
and become an Atarian Hinder, Then it became a Commodore
sixty four, then it turned into a Macintosh, and I
wrote like ten, twelve, fifteen different pieces of software that
I ended up selling commercially. And I was just a kid.
I didn't know what I was doing, and I was
self trained. I didn't really have any formal computer science education.
(11:19):
It was cool to work at Apple in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I was a sophomore in college, such an iconic time.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Steve Jobs was walking around, but all of the original
players and the Mac team were there. I mean, it
was an imprint in my subconscious of what that cool
company was and who that cool leader was. And I'll
never forget that. I am so deeply grateful that I
had that experience. I'm deeply grateful to Steve Jobs. He
had a huge impact on my life. He had a
(11:47):
huge impact on Salesforce. When I started Salesforce, he would
call me all the time and give me advice. And
I actually wish I had taken more of his advice.
I mean a lot of the things he was saying
I did not understand, but he was right.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So you said you won't hire anyway MOK coders at Salesforce,
and you've said today's CEOs will be the last to
manage all human workforces.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
What does this mean for businesses?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well, I just had a meeting with my head of
engineering and we're looking at productivity levels thirty to fifty
percent this year, and key functions like engineering, coding, support.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You're saying service AI is doing thirty to fifty percent
of the work.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
AI is doing thirty to fifty percent of the work
at Salesforce now, and I think that that will continue.
I think that all of us have to get our
head around this idea that AI can do things that
before we were doing and we can move on to
do higher value work.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So Salesforce is seventy five thousand employees now, is it
half that in the future.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I'm not willing to make a projection exactly like that.
I do think probably will rebalance. There's no question that
we have this opportunity to take advantage of the technology
to get to a new place, and I think every
company is going to be able to do that. Look
at our own support. Just four months in we have
help dot Salesforce dot com, which is our agent force
doing our support. We have nine thousand human support engineers.
(13:07):
They're still involved, they're still doing their work, but they're
just starting to do different kinds of work. Because we've
already done more than five hundred thousand conversations soon a
million through agent force. That's just for us, and then
when you extrapolate that with all the agents, you know,
the billion agent dream. That's a big idea that all
these companies can do all these incredible things. Like I
(13:31):
was saying this idea of Disney or Lenar, the nation's
largest home builder, one of them, They're able to do
all their sales and service and support with agents. Or
you take another exciting customer, there's like so many of
them open table Like I'm going to make am going
to go to an open table and make a reservation
for Saturday night. I do all the time. And this
(13:53):
week we've been working with their employees now for six
months with agent Force now it runs on the concer
side as well. So that is just very exciting that
we're able to impact our customers in a positive way,
making them more productive and helping to change that balance
of work.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So Salesforce is marketing it's AI tools on their ability
to replace human labor. Do you have any ethical qualms
about that?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, it's a digital labor revolution. That is, we're probably
looking at three to twelve trillion dollars of digital labor
getting deployed, and that digital labor is going to be
everything from AI agents to robots. We've seen all the
kind of robots that are coming We've seen the movies
for a long time. Right now we're seeing it deployed.
And I think it's really just technologies marching forward. It's
(14:41):
getting lower costs, it's getting easier to use. And I
do think to your point, CEOs have to make sure
their values are in the right place and that values
bring value. But we're becoming more automated.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Could an agent replace you one day?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I hope so you could already say to my point,
which is that some of my job is already be
done by AI. I mean, I'll be honest with you.
I'll write my plan, my business plan, and then I'll
say to the agent. Now, I mean, I've been doing
this now for almost three years. Hey, great it What
do you think of my plan against my competitor. I
won't tell you which competitor, but against this competitor, which
(15:16):
you know, how do you think I'm doing it? And
I'll say, oh, Mark, I think you know it's about
a B plus And I'll say, well, what does it
need to do to get to an A? And I
think that idea of knowing how to talk to the
AI and communicate with the AI. And I've been training
a lot of my friends on how to do that.
I just had a friend of mine who left the FDA,
you know, took one of these Trump leaves, and he's
(15:37):
thinking about what does he do next? How does he
think about it? And he hadn't really worked with an AI,
and so I'm working with the I and I'm saying
to him, Hey, ask the AI these questions, you know, hey,
what about this? And he's using very technical terms that
I don't even know what The technical terms are based
on certain biological substances that he understands and chemical substances.
(15:58):
But the AI understood a lot of what he's talking about.
And then I watched him interact with the AI for
about fifteen minutes, and together they came up with a
company idea named it brand It built a slide deck.
And he walked away kind of shaking his head, going, yeah,
that is a new potential future for me.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So why do you hope an agent replaces you one day?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, I think that this idea that AI can do
a really good job and a lot of these functions.
So I mean, of course, I'm partially kidding you know that,
But I'm like, I do think, Look, how long will
it be where there's an AI also interviewing me with you.
You know that is we could be talking. It knows
my whole background and knows all of my interviews, and
(16:39):
then you know, I want.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
The real thing that agent I don't want AI.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Mark, Agent Emily. Okay, and Emily both are interviewing me,
and you could turn to Agent Emily and say, Agent Emily,
what question did I not ask Mark? Like you've probably
asked me a thousand questions, and then say, hey, what
question should I ask him? Now? Based on all of
the history that I've had with Mark, it might have
a really unique answer. I was at a conference yesterday
(17:04):
and there was a political leader there and we were
having this dialogue with him, and at the end of
the conference, they said, hey, we've had AI listening to
this conference and just listen to all of your questions,
and we are going to have now AI ask you
the last question. It was able to sum all of
the questions that we had already asked, plus that person's
(17:25):
whole individual history, and then ask that final question.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Sam Altman's you open.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
AI recently told me it's going to get really weird
when we're walking down the street with a pack of
humanoid robots how do you see robotics and AI agents
coming together?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
First of all, I'm just trying to like help this
come along right now in the present moment. And I
think that it's not a huge leap to think that
that's going to be a weird idea. I mean, we've
seen the movies, so we can kind of envision some
of this is going to happen, and we can see
where the robots are and where the software is. But
no robot is walking home with you today. But you
(18:02):
might get in a weaimo, and maybe a weaymo is
not that far away from a robot taking new home.
Is that weird?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Maybe maybe not? I could get used to it.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I yeess.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I mean it's the car that's just driving itself around
San Francisco. I think a lot of people haven't driven
in an autonomous vehicle. And when they come here, they're
hanging out with me. They're staying with me in my house.
I'm like, I'm going to call a weimo for you,
and a lot of people are like, I don't know,
can I get in there? And I put them in
and whisk them away and said okay, bye bye. It's
that experience. It's a robot on wheels.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So I don't know if you know this, but our
last interview at Dreamforce, someone spoofed it, and Salesforce has
kind of become a meme. There's these jokes out there.
People who use it say it can be confusing. They
joke that some people don't even know what it is.
How do you feel about your company being both a
lifeline and a punchline.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I love it, And also like even Elon Musk texted
me and said, hey, I don't understand what does Salesforce do?
And I'm like, what is this the meme? And he's like, yeah,
you also have slash, Yeah we also have Slack, you
have Tableau, Yeah we have Tableau. You also have MuleSoft.
Yeah we also have all these other products. It's like,
why do you call this company Salesforce? I'm like, what
(19:09):
should we call it? Agent Force? So yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You've been throwing some shade at Microsoft lately. You've said
Copilot is the new Clippy? What's the beef? What did
Clippy ever do to you?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
As we've gotten ready to kind of change the conversation
around AI for enterprises to agents, which I think we've done,
and you were there when it first happened. We had
to make it clear. The difference between what we were
saying to what Microsoft was saying, and what Microsoft was
saying was, hey, this is a copilot revolution. We're all
going to have this copilot. It's about the copilot. And
(19:44):
then customers were not connecting with that. They weren't using it.
It wasn't giving them value. Maybe developers were getting some
value of it with coding, but even that's been eclipsed
by Cursor and surf wrighter and these things. So this
idea that yeah, co pilot was kind of clippy too
oh for them. It's like, wasn't really doing for customers
what they wanted. And then we said, no, look at this,
(20:06):
this is the agent force vision. This is what AI
was meant to be. That these are agents who are
making you more productive or reducing your costs, making things easier.
And yes, they can augment you as an employee like
it's doing for me as a CEO, but it also
can give you more productivity, like helping you answer your customers' questions.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Google and Meta are on trial for being monopolies. Is
big tech too big? Should it be broken up?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It probably has been too big and it probably should
be broken up. And there probably is too much power
in these companies, and especially when you get to AI,
you're looking at the mass of even more power. So
these companies they make their own models, they control entire industries,
they control all of advertising, or they control this social
network or they control this, it's going to augment their power.
(20:52):
So yes, that power has to be looked at. And
the reflection of AI and everything that we just talked
about that everybody power dynamic changes and for companies that
control or have monopolistic aspects of their business, it has
to be looked at. I mean, you remember Microsoft also
had a consent decree because they became monopolistic. We ended
(21:14):
up buying Slack because Microsoft was doing things that ended
up in a EU justification against Microsoft. So companies need
to be kept in check, and I think that that
is a key part of the government's role when it
comes to competition in capitalism, that there has to be guardrails.
And that's definitely one of the guardrails of capitalism.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Salesforce has bought a lot of companies, big companies. Is
that era of deal making kind of dead?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, a lot of the companies that we bought were
small at the time and have become big.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Like you mentioned the twenty seven billion dollar acquisition.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yes, but the company itself was doing less than I
think a billion dollars in revenue or so, like it
wasn't very much revenue. It's grown. These companies have grown
because we've been able to grow them. And yeah, it's
important to be able to do these deals. And we
put together a great company. We gave guidance that we're
going to do forty point nine billion in revenue this year,
and we gave guidance so we're going to do fourteen
(22:07):
and a half billion in cash flow.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
So are you still buying? Then? Are you still are
you looking at We.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Have continued to buy companies. We just bought another great
company called the Own Company and it's an amazing company
built in our ecosystem that helps our customers back up
their data. And so yes, we're continuing to buy. Even
Agent Force was built on the platform of a company
that we acquired more than a year ago of a
former employee where we had bought his company. He was
here for a while, he left, We invested in his company,
(22:35):
then we bought it back.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
What do you think of Oracles moved back into the zeitgeist,
and there's this actually suggestion that Salesforce and Oracle should merge.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well, you know that I love Larry. Larry is my mentor.
I've worked with him now since nineteen eighty six. That
is a long time. I mean it's part and parcel
with my consciousness in terms of how business runs. And look,
I can't say enough great things about him. He's an
incredible entrepreneur and how he keeps creating and recreating and
(23:04):
recreating his business. And when I saw him at the
White House and he's got Stargate and he's got this,
and he has that, and he has his friend who
I'm also very close with, Masissan. I mean it was
very cool. You know. I remember when he first met
Masassan and we're at the top of SoftBank's tower and
we're in Tokyo and the conference room in the sun
is going down and it's a real spiritual moment and
(23:27):
Larry's like, look at that. It's like God, it's right there.
And it was awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It wasn't always sunshine and roses with Larry. I mean,
you were his protege at Oracle. But then I think
he kicked you out when he found out you were
starting a competitor. Is this a keep your friends close
and enemies closer situation?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Well, I think we've always been really close and I
feel incredible feeling too family when I'm with him, and
you know, he's taken very good care of me and
I am. I think we'll always have that friendship no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Throughout your career, you've been an advocate for social justice.
You've stood up for your employees in various states through
politic shifts, but more recently you've stepped back from some
of the diversity and equality initiatives within Salesforce. You've been
criticized for cheerleading for the new administration. How do you
navigate the intersection of politics and running a global company.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's two different things. I think one thing is equality
is a core value at Salesforce, and as someone who
grew up in San Francisco, that's in my heart, you know,
I guess my heart has rainbow colors. And in terms
of making adjustments at Salesforce, I think that you know,
when we can look at it in the reflection of
the current administration, what's going on. Even in the world,
(24:34):
there are certain things that we were doing that just
were too extreme, and so it gave us an opportunity
to look at, hey, how do we slightly adjust what's
going on while maintaining our core values. And then I
think on the second side of that, I would say
that it's a funny thing. You know, I own Time Magazine.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You just interviewed President Trump.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Donald Trump is on the cover of Time last Friday.
Time Magazine got a call we want you and your
video crew and your photographers in the Oval office on Tuesday.
So our CEO, our editor in chief, our photographers, our
entire team went and so that comes out today. And also,
we have one hundred year history that the president who's
(25:16):
elected that year becomes Person of the Year. Well, if
we put him on the cover and if we make
him Personal of the Year, even though there's one hundred
year history of Time, we're all of a sudden siding
with the administration. It's a funny thing because you get
a huge blowback from the right that were two left,
and then you get a huge blowback from the left
that were two right. And kind of that's what I
really want Time Magazine to be is right down in
(25:39):
the middle and to reflect both sides, and I think
it's great that he's on the cover. And by the way,
lots of people are on the cover, and that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Well, I think there's this perception that your own politics
have flipped, like, is there a sincere change in your
politics or ideals or is this business savvy and opportunism.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Well, the funny thing is about my politics is that
I have to remind people. I was in the George
Bush administration, I was the chairman of the p TECH.
I was a lifelong Republican, and then at the end
of that administration, I basically said, I think I'm becoming
more independent and I want to be able to work
with every administration. And then I also said at the
(26:16):
end of that administration that I would never take another
job inside government. I'm happy to be an advisor to
a president, happy to be advisor to an ex president,
but I don't want any more political jobs. I realized
that that's an industry I just did not really understand.
Some of my friends are very good working in that industry.
I'm not one of those people. I don't know how
(26:39):
exactly to do it. I can kind of do what
I'm doing, but I don't feel like I should be
at that level operationally.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You've had a couple of co CEOs who people thought
would replace you it didn't happen. Maybe you thought they
would replace you. Why has it been so hard to
pass it?
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It's a good question, I mean, maybe you have a
good analysis.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I thought I've been on a succession plan several times
where there was a successor in place. I feel like
I always want to have a successor in place. I
have one now, I had one before. I don't think
I should talk about it anymore as one of the
things I learned, because all of a sudden, it like changes,
maybe through nothing I'm doing, or maybe it is something
that I'm doing. But you can tell me privately what
you think what I should be.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well, so is it them or you? Why are you
sticking around?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Listen? Number one, I've never been happier, more excited about Salesforce.
You know, I just finished my management meeting and then
came right here. I didn't even have time to do
my normal makeup and do my hair whatever. I don't
even know how I look.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You're good, but.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I was just, you know, did my management meeting for
three hours and it went by like a snap, you know,
because I just am so excited. Yesterday I was at
an all day conference actually in this building from nine
am to nine pm. Again, it was like five minutes,
and I'm like, there's so many exciting things happening in
this industry. It is so fun. It's like that first
(27:58):
minute that I walked into radio shack all that computer.
Of course, you know how life is. There's ebbs and
flows there. You feel like there's moments where you are bored,
and you aren't bored that you're excited or you're depressed.
But right now I'm like, Wow, this is great and
it's amazing what's happening. I'm sure you see it yourself everywhere.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You've got how many more dreamforces do you have in you?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think I have to walk away from that thought
and I have to just let it come through me
and look if that changes, that changes. But I'm totally
trying to be as healthy as I can be, as
happy as I can be, spend as much time with
my family as I can spend, work as hard as
I can work. And we talked about two amazing companies today,
Salesforce and Time. Both of them have this incredible role today.
(28:44):
Plus I'm advising and working with so many of these
startups and mentoring these kids. And I have invested in
more than two hundred private companies. Salesforce also has invested
in hundreds of companies. I mean, that's another exciting part.
And to influence them and to kind of give them
some of the ideas that we have, which is that, hey,
(29:05):
you know what, business is the greatest platform for change.
You could take one percent of your equity, profit and time,
just like we did. We've had this great outcome. You know,
we've done ten million hours of volunteerism. We run fifty
thousand nonprofits for free. We've given away about a billion dollars.
You can do the same thing, you know. That's the
fun part, you know business, or like you probably know,
(29:25):
we're about two blocks away from Benioff Children's Hospital here,
and there's another one you know in Oakland, and the
last time we talked about and there's something in Hawaii.
There's three hospitals in Hawaii now. And that's the fun part.
It's all of it together that makes a life.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
So what is one habit or ritual that makes you
a successful leader.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well, we've talked about this in exhaustion. You know it
is that I think it's cultivating a beginner's mind. It
says the Japanese say, show shin sho shin. It means
the beginner's mind. To find that beginner's mind, to tap
into that energy that's in you right now. I've had
dinner last night with five amazing entrepreneurs and one incredible
(30:09):
adventure capitalist, and this idea that you can find that
beginner's spirit in you, whether it's meditation or it's something
else that you're doing, but to recapture the beginner's mind,
because in the expert's mind, you have a few possibilities,
but in the beginner's mind, you have every possibility.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the Circuit.
You can catch the full episode on Bloomberg Originals. I'm
Emily Chang, follow me on x and Instagram at Emily
Chang tv.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
And you can watch new episodes.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Of the Circuit on Bloomberg Television or streaming on the
Bloomberg Gap or YouTube and let us know what.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You think by leaving a review.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Those extra reviews, they really make a difference. I'm your
host and executive producer our Senior producer is Lauren Ellis.
Our associate producer is Heather Glover Huang. Our editor is
Alison Casey. Thanks so much for listening.
I'm Emily Chek and this is the podcast version of
the Circuit my show on Bloomberg Originals. There's one building
that rises above the rest of the San Francisco skyline.
It's home to a software giant whose story begins somewhere
more tropical.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I heard something.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Did you really come up with the idea for Salesforce
while you were swimming with dolphins? And?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Fright? Did I did I do a great dolphin imitation?
Did you know that? Can you?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
How do they respond?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This is Mark Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce, the
world's number one customer relationship management or CRM software provider.
They sell cloud based business tools for sales, marketing, e commerce,
all that good stuff. It might sound niche, but their
clients include the likes of Apple, Boeing, Amazon, and more
than one hundred and fifty thousand companies. Benioff has been
(00:55):
called a master networker, a force of nature, mister disruptor,
and the fresh of software. Let's just say subtlety isn't
really his thing. At its core, this is a story
all about software. A self taught teenage programmer turned visionary
tech billionaire, and believe it or not, it all starts
with a customer service job. In nineteen eighty six, you
(01:16):
could find Benioff answering customer calls at a not so
little future competitor called Oracle, under the wing of longtime
CEO Larry Ellison. Benioff's snack for sales took him straight
to the top. Today, Benioff is all in on the
AI boom with a new product, AI Agents, a digital
workforce to autonomously complete tasks. He isn't the only one
(01:37):
betting big on agentic AI, but true to form, he's
all in.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Good to fore you.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Thanks for having us here. We are back in the
Ohanna room.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Welcome back, Thank you, Ohanna.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm so happy to have you. I know you know
what jwhana means great? How do you know that it means?
How do you know what ohana means?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm from Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You're Hawaii? Are you a native Hawaiian?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm a Kamma.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Were you born in Hawaiian?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was born in Hawaii, born and raised. And you
love Hawaii?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I love Hawaii too.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But next time, if we do this, I want my
ties on the Big Island.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Deal.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Come over.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I've interviewed you many times from your false cloud days,
many many dream forces. But I want to go back
a bit to young Mark growing up in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yes, Young Mark, right.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So, your parents ran department stores. You grew up your
first job was cleaning.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Jewelry Beniof's department store.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Benioff's department stores. Who was Mark Benioff before Mark Benioff?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Do I even exist? Is this an existential thing? Should
I bring in some spiritual.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
But seriously, tell me about you as a kid.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I was born right there, yeah, literally about six blocks
away at Mount Zion Hospital, UCSF, now right onto Visadero Street,
nineteen sixty four, sixty years ago, and I grew up
right there for two years. Then I moved right there
for a while, and then I went to college right
(03:05):
down there. So this is your hood and this is
where I, Yeah, I feel very comfortable here.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You basically invented the SaaS industry software as a service
and made it possible for everything from Netflix to Spotify
to businesses at Google and Microsoft.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
What sparked the entrepreneur in you?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I don't know what sparked the entrepreneur because certainly my
family was entrepreneurial in the Benioff Department stores. On the
other side of my family. My grandfather was a supervisor
and worked right there in City Hall, and he also
was an attorney at six ninety Market Street right there,
and we used to walk right back and forth there,
(03:45):
and he was doing civic leadership, and my father was
a retailer selling clothing, so it was two different worlds.
And then what happened was I was just fifteen years old.
I was cleaning jewelry cases not so far away from here,
in a jewelry store, doing a lot of very hard work,
like cleaning the floors. I remembered really well polishing the cases.
(04:08):
And I walked across the street to a radio shack store,
which doesn't really exist anymore, and I found a computer,
and in that computer I became fascinated as a fifteen
year old, and I taught myself how to program, and
from then I bought other computers kind of based on
this income from this jewelry store. And my grandmother would
(04:29):
say to me, listen, I'll match you, and which was
very exciting. Yeah, the computer was four nine oh of dollars,
so I made two hundred and fifty dollars. She matched
two hundred and fifty dollars I bought the computer. I
sold my first piece of software when I was about fifteen,
called how to Juggle, to a little software reseller in
Santa Barbara, and then I leveraged that into an Apple
(04:54):
Too computer. I didn't like that. I sold that to
a friend of mine who's now our chief technology off
are here, who I've worked with for forty five years,
and that was that.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The rest is history. You founded the company now twenty
five years ago.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
So you've seen the rise of mobile and social and
the cloud and now AI.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
How has the CEO job changed for you?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, the CEO chop is really changing fast because it
used to be I felt very alone at the top.
But now like I just finished writing the business plan
for this year, and I always do that with someone else.
I take one of our executives, And for the last
three years, I've also found a new partner in AI,
(05:37):
and I bring AI in and I have an AI partner.
So I have an AI partner, I have a human partner,
and it's the three of us who are writing the
plan together, so it's a little less lonely at the top.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
You said you'll have a billion agents on salesforce before
the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yes, are you on track? What are they doing? I mean,
will they be doing?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Remarkably on track because we now have about five thousand
customers deploying this and it's amazing how many agents we
see getting spawned every year. We're tracking very closely how
these conversations are growing, so week by week we're looking
at how are the conversations growing, and it's amazing. So
I think it's going to be incredible. I mean, by far,
(06:15):
it's the fastest growing, most exciting thing we've ever done.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
You've thrown around this term AI nirvana.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
What is that? When do we get there? And how
do we know? What won't feel like?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Hell?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well, I mean, nobody exactly knows what's going to happen
when we get to this next level of AI. I
can tell you in the current level of AI, between
this combination of large language models and these new reasoning
models and where we are, we're able to provide this
kind of digital labor revolution. It's an opportunity for our
customers to improve productivity without hiring more employees, and to
(06:49):
let them redeploy existing employees into functions that need more attention,
more growth. I'm doing it myself. It's amazing, and that's
really important because it's hard to hire right now, isn't
as many people available. Unemployment is remarkably low. Interesting, so
you know, we have a point where we're going to
be able to add in digital labor in addition to
(07:11):
physical labor, so productivity itself will improve.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You bought the name Einstein, he's the face of your AI,
but how smart are these agents really?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Ten years ago we had the vision that AI would
surround us, and we bought that Einstein name, or really
licensed it. You know, you can't really buy his name,
but we licensed it for artificial intelligence because we really
believed that this is where we were going to end up,
in this incredible place, which is why this week we'll
probably do about a trillion Einstein transactions for all of
(07:42):
our customers around the world just this week. Yeah, and
now it's evolving into agent force, this idea that it's
these agents, these digital laborers, digital employees who are out
there doing this work, servicing the customer, selling the customer,
marketing to the customer, partnering with me to help run
the company, partnering with me to do the analytics partnering
(08:05):
with me to help do the marketing, the branding. So
that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So what do you think Einstein would think? Would Einstein
be proud?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think Einstein would be using AI in his work,
There's no question. You know, he could have his insights,
his capabilities and then probably would validate them using AI.
Yesterday I was with a Nobel Prize laureate who has
received this incredible Nobel Prize for his work in proteomics,
and then he's envisioning now how he's designing new drugs
(08:34):
using AI. I mean that is a leap that we
didn't think any of us a lot that we would
get there as quickly as we are, and now we
can see that scientists have all types. So yes, Einstein
or whoever is going to have the ability to go faster,
be more productive. Because of this capability, you're just able
to do more.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
How secure is all this?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I mean there's malicious code, there's hallucinations.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
What are the risks for businesses?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Well, those are two different things. I think security and
hallucinations are just slightly different. So security, there's no finish line.
We're in a world of cryptography and changes to cryptography
and the security issues, and you can never have extreme
confidence on security, you have to be completely paranoid. Hallucinations
is a different story. That is because of the nature
(09:23):
of the models that we're using right now. They're called
large language models, combined with these reasoning models, these two
things together and kind of the current state of the
art of AI is not one hundred percent accurate. And
you know that because anyone who's used any of these things,
so wait a minute, that's not well, like everybody probably
puts their name in and goes, wait, that's not me,
or that's not my exact bio.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Doesn't it get messier.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
It could get a lot more accurate. It could get
more accurate because the models themselves are stacking their intelligence,
so hopefully they're honing what the truth is, and that's
the hope. Right now, it's not one hundred percent accurate.
In our own work. We're doing hundreds of thousands of
conversations just ourselves and our company with our customers, and
(10:09):
we have about ninety three percent accuracy. Even for a
large brand or a large company that we work with,
like Disney, it's about ninety three percent. It's not one
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Ninety three percent though, that's not good enough, is it.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
It's pretty good. You're able to do a lot, but
you have to be realistic that we're not at one hundred.
You'll never see me saying that we're at one hundred percent.
But I think for a lot of the other vendors
maybe they're at much lower levels because they don't have
as much data and metadata and they're not able to
kind of put as much information into the model to
get to a higher level of accuracy.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You started out as a coder at Apple in nineteen
eighty four. Thank you were an intern in the Mac division.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Well, hey, you've done your homework.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I have done my homework here in twenty twenty five,
though you've said you won't hire any more coders, Well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You're right. When I was fifteen, I was writing that
software on that Tierrasad. Then it became an Apple too,
and become an Atarian Hinder, Then it became a Commodore
sixty four, then it turned into a Macintosh, and I
wrote like ten, twelve, fifteen different pieces of software that
I ended up selling commercially. And I was just a kid.
I didn't know what I was doing, and I was
self trained. I didn't really have any formal computer science education.
(11:19):
It was cool to work at Apple in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I was a sophomore in college, such an iconic time.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Steve Jobs was walking around, but all of the original
players and the Mac team were there. I mean, it
was an imprint in my subconscious of what that cool
company was and who that cool leader was. And I'll
never forget that. I am so deeply grateful that I
had that experience. I'm deeply grateful to Steve Jobs. He
had a huge impact on my life. He had a
(11:47):
huge impact on Salesforce. When I started Salesforce, he would
call me all the time and give me advice. And
I actually wish I had taken more of his advice.
I mean a lot of the things he was saying
I did not understand, but he was right.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So you said you won't hire anyway MOK coders at Salesforce,
and you've said today's CEOs will be the last to
manage all human workforces.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
What does this mean for businesses?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well, I just had a meeting with my head of
engineering and we're looking at productivity levels thirty to fifty
percent this year, and key functions like engineering, coding, support.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You're saying service AI is doing thirty to fifty percent
of the work.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
AI is doing thirty to fifty percent of the work
at Salesforce now, and I think that that will continue.
I think that all of us have to get our
head around this idea that AI can do things that
before we were doing and we can move on to
do higher value work.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So Salesforce is seventy five thousand employees now, is it
half that in the future.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I'm not willing to make a projection exactly like that.
I do think probably will rebalance. There's no question that
we have this opportunity to take advantage of the technology
to get to a new place, and I think every
company is going to be able to do that. Look
at our own support. Just four months in we have
help dot Salesforce dot com, which is our agent force
doing our support. We have nine thousand human support engineers.
(13:07):
They're still involved, they're still doing their work, but they're
just starting to do different kinds of work. Because we've
already done more than five hundred thousand conversations soon a
million through agent force. That's just for us, and then
when you extrapolate that with all the agents, you know,
the billion agent dream. That's a big idea that all
these companies can do all these incredible things. Like I
(13:31):
was saying this idea of Disney or Lenar, the nation's
largest home builder, one of them, They're able to do
all their sales and service and support with agents. Or
you take another exciting customer, there's like so many of
them open table Like I'm going to make am going
to go to an open table and make a reservation
for Saturday night. I do all the time. And this
(13:53):
week we've been working with their employees now for six
months with agent Force now it runs on the concer
side as well. So that is just very exciting that
we're able to impact our customers in a positive way,
making them more productive and helping to change that balance
of work.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So Salesforce is marketing it's AI tools on their ability
to replace human labor. Do you have any ethical qualms
about that?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, it's a digital labor revolution. That is, we're probably
looking at three to twelve trillion dollars of digital labor
getting deployed, and that digital labor is going to be
everything from AI agents to robots. We've seen all the
kind of robots that are coming We've seen the movies
for a long time. Right now we're seeing it deployed.
And I think it's really just technologies marching forward. It's
(14:41):
getting lower costs, it's getting easier to use. And I
do think to your point, CEOs have to make sure
their values are in the right place and that values
bring value. But we're becoming more automated.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Could an agent replace you one day?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I hope so you could already say to my point,
which is that some of my job is already be
done by AI. I mean, I'll be honest with you.
I'll write my plan, my business plan, and then I'll
say to the agent. Now, I mean, I've been doing
this now for almost three years. Hey, great it What
do you think of my plan against my competitor. I
won't tell you which competitor, but against this competitor, which
(15:16):
you know, how do you think I'm doing it? And
I'll say, oh, Mark, I think you know it's about
a B plus And I'll say, well, what does it
need to do to get to an A? And I
think that idea of knowing how to talk to the
AI and communicate with the AI. And I've been training
a lot of my friends on how to do that.
I just had a friend of mine who left the FDA,
you know, took one of these Trump leaves, and he's
(15:37):
thinking about what does he do next? How does he
think about it? And he hadn't really worked with an AI,
and so I'm working with the I and I'm saying
to him, Hey, ask the AI these questions, you know, hey,
what about this? And he's using very technical terms that
I don't even know what The technical terms are based
on certain biological substances that he understands and chemical substances.
(15:58):
But the AI understood a lot of what he's talking about.
And then I watched him interact with the AI for
about fifteen minutes, and together they came up with a
company idea named it brand It built a slide deck.
And he walked away kind of shaking his head, going, yeah,
that is a new potential future for me.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So why do you hope an agent replaces you one day?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, I think that this idea that AI can do
a really good job and a lot of these functions.
So I mean, of course, I'm partially kidding you know that,
But I'm like, I do think, Look, how long will
it be where there's an AI also interviewing me with you.
You know that is we could be talking. It knows
my whole background and knows all of my interviews, and
(16:39):
then you know, I want.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
The real thing that agent I don't want AI.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Mark, Agent Emily. Okay, and Emily both are interviewing me,
and you could turn to Agent Emily and say, Agent Emily,
what question did I not ask Mark? Like you've probably
asked me a thousand questions, and then say, hey, what
question should I ask him? Now? Based on all of
the history that I've had with Mark, it might have
a really unique answer. I was at a conference yesterday
(17:04):
and there was a political leader there and we were
having this dialogue with him, and at the end of
the conference, they said, hey, we've had AI listening to
this conference and just listen to all of your questions,
and we are going to have now AI ask you
the last question. It was able to sum all of
the questions that we had already asked, plus that person's
(17:25):
whole individual history, and then ask that final question.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Sam Altman's you open.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
AI recently told me it's going to get really weird
when we're walking down the street with a pack of
humanoid robots how do you see robotics and AI agents
coming together?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
First of all, I'm just trying to like help this
come along right now in the present moment. And I
think that it's not a huge leap to think that
that's going to be a weird idea. I mean, we've
seen the movies, so we can kind of envision some
of this is going to happen, and we can see
where the robots are and where the software is. But
no robot is walking home with you today. But you
(18:02):
might get in a weaimo, and maybe a weaymo is
not that far away from a robot taking new home.
Is that weird?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Maybe maybe not? I could get used to it.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I yeess.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I mean it's the car that's just driving itself around
San Francisco. I think a lot of people haven't driven
in an autonomous vehicle. And when they come here, they're
hanging out with me. They're staying with me in my house.
I'm like, I'm going to call a weimo for you,
and a lot of people are like, I don't know,
can I get in there? And I put them in
and whisk them away and said okay, bye bye. It's
that experience. It's a robot on wheels.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So I don't know if you know this, but our
last interview at Dreamforce, someone spoofed it, and Salesforce has
kind of become a meme. There's these jokes out there.
People who use it say it can be confusing. They
joke that some people don't even know what it is.
How do you feel about your company being both a
lifeline and a punchline.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I love it, And also like even Elon Musk texted
me and said, hey, I don't understand what does Salesforce do?
And I'm like, what is this the meme? And he's like, yeah,
you also have slash, Yeah we also have Slack, you
have Tableau, Yeah we have Tableau. You also have MuleSoft.
Yeah we also have all these other products. It's like,
why do you call this company Salesforce? I'm like, what
(19:09):
should we call it? Agent Force? So yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You've been throwing some shade at Microsoft lately. You've said
Copilot is the new Clippy? What's the beef? What did
Clippy ever do to you?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
As we've gotten ready to kind of change the conversation
around AI for enterprises to agents, which I think we've done,
and you were there when it first happened. We had
to make it clear. The difference between what we were
saying to what Microsoft was saying, and what Microsoft was
saying was, hey, this is a copilot revolution. We're all
going to have this copilot. It's about the copilot. And
(19:44):
then customers were not connecting with that. They weren't using it.
It wasn't giving them value. Maybe developers were getting some
value of it with coding, but even that's been eclipsed
by Cursor and surf wrighter and these things. So this
idea that yeah, co pilot was kind of clippy too
oh for them. It's like, wasn't really doing for customers
what they wanted. And then we said, no, look at this,
(20:06):
this is the agent force vision. This is what AI
was meant to be. That these are agents who are
making you more productive or reducing your costs, making things easier.
And yes, they can augment you as an employee like
it's doing for me as a CEO, but it also
can give you more productivity, like helping you answer your customers' questions.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Google and Meta are on trial for being monopolies. Is
big tech too big? Should it be broken up?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It probably has been too big and it probably should
be broken up. And there probably is too much power
in these companies, and especially when you get to AI,
you're looking at the mass of even more power. So
these companies they make their own models, they control entire industries,
they control all of advertising, or they control this social
network or they control this, it's going to augment their power.
(20:52):
So yes, that power has to be looked at. And
the reflection of AI and everything that we just talked
about that everybody power dynamic changes and for companies that
control or have monopolistic aspects of their business, it has
to be looked at. I mean, you remember Microsoft also
had a consent decree because they became monopolistic. We ended
(21:14):
up buying Slack because Microsoft was doing things that ended
up in a EU justification against Microsoft. So companies need
to be kept in check, and I think that that
is a key part of the government's role when it
comes to competition in capitalism, that there has to be guardrails.
And that's definitely one of the guardrails of capitalism.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Salesforce has bought a lot of companies, big companies. Is
that era of deal making kind of dead?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, a lot of the companies that we bought were
small at the time and have become big.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Like you mentioned the twenty seven billion dollar acquisition.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yes, but the company itself was doing less than I
think a billion dollars in revenue or so, like it
wasn't very much revenue. It's grown. These companies have grown
because we've been able to grow them. And yeah, it's
important to be able to do these deals. And we
put together a great company. We gave guidance that we're
going to do forty point nine billion in revenue this year,
and we gave guidance so we're going to do fourteen
(22:07):
and a half billion in cash flow.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
So are you still buying? Then? Are you still are
you looking at We.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Have continued to buy companies. We just bought another great
company called the Own Company and it's an amazing company
built in our ecosystem that helps our customers back up
their data. And so yes, we're continuing to buy. Even
Agent Force was built on the platform of a company
that we acquired more than a year ago of a
former employee where we had bought his company. He was
here for a while, he left, We invested in his company,
(22:35):
then we bought it back.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
What do you think of Oracles moved back into the zeitgeist,
and there's this actually suggestion that Salesforce and Oracle should merge.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well, you know that I love Larry. Larry is my mentor.
I've worked with him now since nineteen eighty six. That
is a long time. I mean it's part and parcel
with my consciousness in terms of how business runs. And look,
I can't say enough great things about him. He's an
incredible entrepreneur and how he keeps creating and recreating and
(23:04):
recreating his business. And when I saw him at the
White House and he's got Stargate and he's got this,
and he has that, and he has his friend who
I'm also very close with, Masissan. I mean it was
very cool. You know. I remember when he first met
Masassan and we're at the top of SoftBank's tower and
we're in Tokyo and the conference room in the sun
is going down and it's a real spiritual moment and
(23:27):
Larry's like, look at that. It's like God, it's right there.
And it was awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It wasn't always sunshine and roses with Larry. I mean,
you were his protege at Oracle. But then I think
he kicked you out when he found out you were
starting a competitor. Is this a keep your friends close
and enemies closer situation?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Well, I think we've always been really close and I
feel incredible feeling too family when I'm with him, and
you know, he's taken very good care of me and
I am. I think we'll always have that friendship no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Throughout your career, you've been an advocate for social justice.
You've stood up for your employees in various states through
politic shifts, but more recently you've stepped back from some
of the diversity and equality initiatives within Salesforce. You've been
criticized for cheerleading for the new administration. How do you
navigate the intersection of politics and running a global company.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's two different things. I think one thing is equality
is a core value at Salesforce, and as someone who
grew up in San Francisco, that's in my heart, you know,
I guess my heart has rainbow colors. And in terms
of making adjustments at Salesforce, I think that you know,
when we can look at it in the reflection of
the current administration, what's going on. Even in the world,
(24:34):
there are certain things that we were doing that just
were too extreme, and so it gave us an opportunity
to look at, hey, how do we slightly adjust what's
going on while maintaining our core values. And then I
think on the second side of that, I would say
that it's a funny thing. You know, I own Time Magazine.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You just interviewed President Trump.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Donald Trump is on the cover of Time last Friday.
Time Magazine got a call we want you and your
video crew and your photographers in the Oval office on Tuesday.
So our CEO, our editor in chief, our photographers, our
entire team went and so that comes out today. And also,
we have one hundred year history that the president who's
(25:16):
elected that year becomes Person of the Year. Well, if
we put him on the cover and if we make
him Personal of the Year, even though there's one hundred
year history of Time, we're all of a sudden siding
with the administration. It's a funny thing because you get
a huge blowback from the right that were two left,
and then you get a huge blowback from the left
that were two right. And kind of that's what I
really want Time Magazine to be is right down in
(25:39):
the middle and to reflect both sides, and I think
it's great that he's on the cover. And by the way,
lots of people are on the cover, and that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Well, I think there's this perception that your own politics
have flipped, like, is there a sincere change in your
politics or ideals or is this business savvy and opportunism.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Well, the funny thing is about my politics is that
I have to remind people. I was in the George
Bush administration, I was the chairman of the p TECH.
I was a lifelong Republican, and then at the end
of that administration, I basically said, I think I'm becoming
more independent and I want to be able to work
with every administration. And then I also said at the
(26:16):
end of that administration that I would never take another
job inside government. I'm happy to be an advisor to
a president, happy to be advisor to an ex president,
but I don't want any more political jobs. I realized
that that's an industry I just did not really understand.
Some of my friends are very good working in that industry.
I'm not one of those people. I don't know how
(26:39):
exactly to do it. I can kind of do what
I'm doing, but I don't feel like I should be
at that level operationally.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You've had a couple of co CEOs who people thought
would replace you it didn't happen. Maybe you thought they
would replace you. Why has it been so hard to
pass it?
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It's a good question, I mean, maybe you have a
good analysis.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I thought I've been on a succession plan several times
where there was a successor in place. I feel like
I always want to have a successor in place. I
have one now, I had one before. I don't think
I should talk about it anymore as one of the
things I learned, because all of a sudden, it like changes,
maybe through nothing I'm doing, or maybe it is something
that I'm doing. But you can tell me privately what
you think what I should be.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well, so is it them or you? Why are you
sticking around?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Listen? Number one, I've never been happier, more excited about Salesforce.
You know, I just finished my management meeting and then
came right here. I didn't even have time to do
my normal makeup and do my hair whatever. I don't
even know how I look.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You're good, but.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I was just, you know, did my management meeting for
three hours and it went by like a snap, you know,
because I just am so excited. Yesterday I was at
an all day conference actually in this building from nine
am to nine pm. Again, it was like five minutes,
and I'm like, there's so many exciting things happening in
this industry. It is so fun. It's like that first
(27:58):
minute that I walked into radio shack all that computer.
Of course, you know how life is. There's ebbs and
flows there. You feel like there's moments where you are bored,
and you aren't bored that you're excited or you're depressed.
But right now I'm like, Wow, this is great and
it's amazing what's happening. I'm sure you see it yourself everywhere.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You've got how many more dreamforces do you have in you?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think I have to walk away from that thought
and I have to just let it come through me
and look if that changes, that changes. But I'm totally
trying to be as healthy as I can be, as
happy as I can be, spend as much time with
my family as I can spend, work as hard as
I can work. And we talked about two amazing companies today,
Salesforce and Time. Both of them have this incredible role today.
(28:44):
Plus I'm advising and working with so many of these
startups and mentoring these kids. And I have invested in
more than two hundred private companies. Salesforce also has invested
in hundreds of companies. I mean, that's another exciting part.
And to influence them and to kind of give them
some of the ideas that we have, which is that, hey,
(29:05):
you know what, business is the greatest platform for change.
You could take one percent of your equity, profit and time,
just like we did. We've had this great outcome. You know,
we've done ten million hours of volunteerism. We run fifty
thousand nonprofits for free. We've given away about a billion dollars.
You can do the same thing, you know. That's the
fun part, you know business, or like you probably know,
(29:25):
we're about two blocks away from Benioff Children's Hospital here,
and there's another one you know in Oakland, and the
last time we talked about and there's something in Hawaii.
There's three hospitals in Hawaii now. And that's the fun part.
It's all of it together that makes a life.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
So what is one habit or ritual that makes you
a successful leader.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well, we've talked about this in exhaustion. You know it
is that I think it's cultivating a beginner's mind. It
says the Japanese say, show shin sho shin. It means
the beginner's mind. To find that beginner's mind, to tap
into that energy that's in you right now. I've had
dinner last night with five amazing entrepreneurs and one incredible
(30:09):
adventure capitalist, and this idea that you can find that
beginner's spirit in you, whether it's meditation or it's something
else that you're doing, but to recapture the beginner's mind,
because in the expert's mind, you have a few possibilities,
but in the beginner's mind, you have every possibility.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the Circuit.
You can catch the full episode on Bloomberg Originals. I'm
Emily Chang, follow me on x and Instagram at Emily
Chang tv.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
And you can watch new episodes.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Of the Circuit on Bloomberg Television or streaming on the
Bloomberg Gap or YouTube and let us know what.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You think by leaving a review.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Those extra reviews, they really make a difference. I'm your
host and executive producer our Senior producer is Lauren Ellis.
Our associate producer is Heather Glover Huang. Our editor is
Alison Casey. Thanks so much for listening.
Host
Emily Chang
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