Salesforce, Inc.
Leadership History
4 leaders · 1999 to present
Marc Benioff is the CEO of Salesforce, in the role since 1999.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bret Taylor | Co-Chief Executive Officer | 2021 | 2023 | 2 |
| Keith Block | Co-Chief Executive Officer | 2018 | 2020 | 2 |
| Marc Benioff | Chair and Chief Executive Officer | 1999 | Present | 27 |
| Parker Harris | Co-founder, Director and Chief Technology Officer, Slack | 1999 | Present | 27 |
Salesforce is the largest CRM software vendor by revenue. Headquartered in Salesforce Tower in San Francisco and listed on the NYSE as CRM, it sells Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing and Commerce clouds, the Salesforce Platform, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, Informatica and Agentforce to businesses worldwide. It had about 83,300 employees at the end of fiscal 2026. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Salesforce sells multi-year software subscriptions, mostly priced per user per month, plus consumption pricing for Data 360 and Agentforce. In fiscal 2026 (ended January 31, 2026), subscription and support revenue was $39.39 billion, about 95% of the $41.53 billion total; professional services added $2.14 billion. Subscription revenue is reported in five offerings: Agentforce Service, Agentforce Sales, Agentforce 360 Platform/Slack/Other, Agentforce Integration and Analytics (MuleSoft, Tableau, Informatica), and Agentforce Marketing and Commerce.
Co-Chief Executive Officer
2021 – 2023
2 years
Taylor became co-chief executive with Marc Benioff in November 2021 after leading the purchase of Slack.
He left at the end of January 2023, leaving Benioff as sole chief executive.
Co-Chief Executive Officer
2018 – 2020
2 years
Block, the former chief operating officer, became co-chief executive with Marc Benioff in August 2018.
He led enterprise sales during the purchases of MuleSoft and Tableau. He stepped down in February 2020.
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
1999 – Present
27 years (current)
Benioff founded Salesforce on browser-delivered CRM, launched AppExchange, led the MuleSoft, Tableau, Slack and Informatica acquisitions, responded to 2023 activist pressure with layoffs, buybacks and a first dividend, and launched Agentforce in 2024.
Benioff has led Salesforce for its entire history, apart from co-CEO periods with Keith Block (2018-2020) and Bret Taylor (2021-2023).
Co-founder, Director and Chief Technology Officer, Slack
1999 – Present
27 years (current)
Harris led engineering of the multi-tenant architecture behind Salesforce, served as CTO from 2016 to January 2024, and has since been CTO of Slack.
Harris is the remaining co-founder in an executive role and a member of the board.
Salesforce faces Microsoft bundling pressure, slower enterprise software budgets, AI feature commoditization, integration complexity after large acquisitions, and the need to prove that Agentforce can become a large paid product rather than only a product narrative.
Marc Benioff is the co-founder, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce, having led the enterprise since its inception in March 1999—over 25 years of visionary founder leadership.
Benioff graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1986. He interned at Apple under Steve Jobs, and spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation under Larry Ellison, becoming Oracle's youngest vice president at age 25.
Keith Block, former Oracle executive, joined Salesforce in 2013 as President and was appointed Co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff in August 2018. Block focused on enterprise operations, vertical industries, and financial execution until stepping down in February 2020.
Bret Taylor (creator of Google Maps and former CTO of Facebook) joined Salesforce via the acquisition of Quip in 2016. Named Co-CEO in November 2021, Taylor spearheaded product vision and the Slack acquisition before stepping down in January 2023 to found AI startup Sierra.
Benioff is known for charismatic vision, marketing showmanship, stakeholder capitalism ("business is the greatest platform for change"), and the Hawaiian concept of "Ohana" (family culture), combined with rigorous quantitative operational execution.
Amy Weaver served as President and Chief Financial Officer of Salesforce from 2021 to 2025 (previously Chief Legal Officer). She was instrumental in driving Salesforce's operating margin expansion past 32% and initiating its first dividend.
Marc Benioff's net worth is estimated between $8 billion and $11 billion, tied primarily to his shareholding in Salesforce, alongside personal venture capital investments and ownership of Time magazine.
Together with his wife Lynne Benioff, he has donated over $600 million to public healthcare and children's hospitals (including UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland), ocean conservation, and initiatives combating urban homelessness.
Salesforce's board includes Marc Benioff (Chair), Robin Washington (Lead Independent Director, former Gilead CFO), Mason Morfit (ValueAct Capital), Arnold Donald (former Carnival CEO), and seasoned technology and public policy leaders.
Benioff engaged directly with activist hedge funds (ValueAct, Elliott Management, Starboard Value), embraced operational margin discipline, cut non-essential costs, instituted stock buybacks, and appointed ValueAct CEO Mason Morfit to the board, successfully diffusing proxy battles.
Benioff has authored several bestselling business books, most notably "Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company" (2009) and "Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change" (2019).
Benioff envisions Salesforce leading the third wave of computing: autonomous artificial intelligence agents (Agentforce), where billions of AI agents collaborate with human workers inside Slack to power global customer relations.
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