Salesforce, Inc.

What does Salesforce own?
Salesforce owns approximately 10 product platforms including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Agentforce, Data 360, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, and AppExchange. The company acquired Slack for approximately $27.7 billion in 2021, Tableau for approximately $15.7 billion in 2019, MuleSoft for approximately $6.5 billion in 2018, and Informatica for approximately $8 billion in 2025.

Is Salesforce publicly traded?
Yes, Salesforce is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CRM. The company went public in June 2004 and is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Major institutional investors include Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street Corporation.

Who founded Salesforce?
Salesforce was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez in San Francisco, California. Benioff, a former Oracle executive, continues to serve as Chairman and CEO.

Where is Salesforce headquartered?
Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA. The company's headquarters, Salesforce Tower, is the tallest office building in San Francisco. Salesforce operates globally with major offices across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

How many brands does Salesforce own?
Salesforce owns approximately 10 product platforms. The most recognizable are Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Agentforce. The company does not operate consumer-facing brands; all products are enterprise software sold on a subscription basis.

Who owns Salesforce?
Salesforce is a publicly traded corporation with a dispersed shareholder base. No single shareholder controls the company. Major institutional investors hold significant stakes, but none exercise operational control. Co-founder Marc Benioff owns approximately 3 percent of outstanding shares and maintains influence through his founder status and role as Chairman and CEO.

What is Salesforce's revenue?
Salesforce reported full fiscal year 2026 revenue of $41.5 billion, up 10 percent year over year. The company initiated fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion and raised its fiscal 2030 revenue target to $63 billion.

Salesforce was founded in March 1999 by Marc Benioff, a former Oracle executive, along with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. The company was established in a rented apartment in San Francisco with the goal of delivering business software through a web browser. At the time, enterprise software required on-premise installation, expensive hardware, and multi-year implementation cycles. Benioff's vision was to make business software as easy to use as a consumer website.

The company launched its first CRM product in 2000, offering sales force automation through a web-based subscription model. The pricing model was simple: $50 per user per month. This was a radical departure from the six-figure licenses that competitors like Siebel Systems and Oracle charged. The subscription model gave Salesforce predictable recurring revenue and gave customers flexibility to scale up or down.

Salesforce went public on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2004 under the ticker symbol CRM. The IPO raised approximately $110 million. At the time of the IPO, the company had approximately 13,000 customers and $175 million in annual revenue.

In 2006, Salesforce launched AppExchange, an enterprise app marketplace that allowed third-party developers to build and sell applications on the Salesforce platform. AppExchange created an ecosystem of independent software vendors building on top of Salesforce's infrastructure. As of 2026, AppExchange hosts thousands of applications and has become a significant competitive moat.

The company pursued a series of acquisitions to expand beyond core CRM. In 2018, Salesforce acquired MuleSoft for approximately $6.5 billion, gaining integration and API management capabilities. In 2019, the company acquired Tableau for approximately $15.7 billion in stock, adding data visualization and business intelligence. In 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for approximately $27.7 billion, its largest acquisition to date, adding enterprise collaboration. In 2025, Salesforce completed the acquisition of Informatica for approximately $8 billion, adding data management and integration capabilities. Informatica contributed $399 million in revenue in Q4 FY2026.

In 2024 and 2025, Salesforce launched Agentforce, its enterprise AI agent platform. Agentforce allows customers to build, deploy, and govern autonomous AI agents across business processes. By the end of fiscal 2026, Agentforce annual recurring revenue reached $800 million, up 169 percent year over year. The company has closed over 29,000 Agentforce deals since launch, with deal count rising 50 percent quarter over quarter in Q4. Salesforce also announced plans to acquire Qualified, a marketing automation company, in early 2026.

The company raised its fiscal 2030 revenue target to $63 billion, up from a previous target of over $60 billion, including the contribution from the Informatica acquisition.

Salesforce has set science-based targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction and has committed to achieving net-zero emissions across its operations by 2040. The company reports approximately 100 percent renewable energy usage as of 2024. Salesforce publishes an annual sustainability report and discloses climate data through CDP.

The company is not a Certified B Corporation. Salesforce's sustainability initiatives include carbon-neutral cloud services, sustainable building standards for its offices, and investments in nature-based solutions. The company has advocated for corporate climate action through its 1.5 degree Celsius aligned commitments.

Salesforce's ethical AI framework includes guidelines for responsible AI development and deployment. The company has published AI ethics principles and established an external AI ethics advisory council. The Agentforce platform includes governance features designed to give enterprises control over AI agent behavior and decision-making.

The Salesforce Foundation, through the company's 1-1-1 philanthropy model (1 percent of equity, 1 percent of employee time, 1 percent of product), has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to education, workforce development, and community initiatives. Salesforce employees volunteer thousands of hours annually.

Salesforce has received recognition from independent organizations for its workplace culture and innovation:

• Fortune Most Admired Companies (2024, 2025): Ranked among the world's most admired companies in the software industry
• Fast Company Most Innovative Companies (2020 to 2025): Multiple years of recognition for cloud and AI innovation
• Great Place to Work Certification (2024, 2025): Certification for workplace culture across multiple regions
• Dow Jones Industrial Average Component: Added in 2020, reflecting the company's significance in the U.S. economy

Salesforce faced significant security controversies in 2025 related to a wave of cyber attacks targeting Salesforce customer instances. Attackers exploited OAuth tokens and social engineering tactics to access Salesforce CRM data. Confirmed victims included Google, Workday, Allianz Life, LVMH brands (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany and Co.), Adidas, GAP, Chanel, Farmers Insurance, Coca-Cola, and UK retailers including Marks and Spencer, Co-op, and Harrods.

The Salesloft-Drift hack in August 2025 was particularly notable. Attackers stole OAuth tokens from the AI-powered sales engagement platform and used them to access connected Salesforce organizations. This breach affected major cybersecurity companies including Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare, Proofpoint, Qualys, and Tenable.

In the Coca-Cola Europacific Partners breach, the Gehenna ransomware group accessed Salesforce dashboards and exfiltrated over 23 million records, including 7.5 million account records and 9.5 million customer service cases. The attackers published sample data on public breach forums and contacted employees.

The broader campaign, attributed to groups including ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider, and Lapsus$, resulted in at least 14 class action lawsuits filed against Salesforce. Plaintiffs claim the company failed to properly secure personally identifiable information. Salesforce faces ongoing regulatory scrutiny regarding its shared responsibility model for SaaS security. The company has shut down integrations with affected third-party applications and implemented enhanced security protocols.

Salesforce has also faced scrutiny regarding data privacy practices, particularly concerning compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The company has implemented comprehensive privacy programs but continues to face regulatory scrutiny in multiple jurisdictions.