SALESFORCE CEO SHARES HIS PREDICTIONS FOR AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has become something of a vanishing breed during the nearly quarter century he has been running the company that pioneered the concept of selling software as an online subscription

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While Benioff remains in charge at Salesforce, other billionaire founder/CEOs such Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Netflix’s Reed Hastings have all stepped away from groundbreaking companies born during the 1990s.

Benioff, 58, isn’t ready to leave Salesforce yet, even though he has amassed an $8 billion fortune and just went through a challenging stretch that might have caused many CEOs to head for the exit. In January, Benioff decided to lay off 8,000 Salesforce employees after overseeing a pandemic-driven expansion that included a nearly $28 billion acquisition of the popular workplace tool Slack and then grappled with an investor backlash triggered by a nearly 50% drop in the company’s stock price last year. The shares have recovered most of their losses so far this year on the strength of a revived revenue growth.

Benioff sat down for an interview that has been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: HOW DOES THE LANDSCAPE LOOK TO YOU AS THE PANDEMIC FADES INTO THE REARVIEW MIRROR?