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The story
Founded by Marc Benioff on Feb 3, 1999.1
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 (SaaS) 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.
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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, Amy 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 (ICE) triple its staff to support the administration's mass deportation campaign. The company had previously contracted for ICE under the Obama and Biden administrations.
From Wikipedia’s article on Salesforce, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.9