Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. is an American company that makes software to help businesses work online. It is based in San Francisco, California, and is very well known for its customer relationship management tools.

The company started in March 1999 by Marc Benioff, who used to work at Oracle. It grew quickly and began selling shares to the public in 2004. Salesforce has bought other companies, like Tableau and Slack, to add more features to its services.

Today, Salesforce is used by many businesses around the world. Its tools help with sales, customer service, marketing, online shopping, and data analysis. The company is part of big stock market groups, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500.

History

Salesforce began on March 8, 1999, by Marc Benioff, who used to work at Oracle, and some friends. They wanted to make software that could be used online instead of needing to be installed on computers. Their first online software was shown in November 1999.

Even when many tech companies had trouble after the dot-com bubble burst, Salesforce kept growing. They became famous for saying "the end of software" and even hired actors to show this message at big tech events. Their money grew from $5.4 million in 2000 to $22.4 million in 2001.

Salesforce held its first big meeting for users, called Dreamforce, in 2003 in San Francisco. In 2004, the company began selling its software to the public and made $110 million. Over the years, Salesforce added new tools to help companies with sales, customer service, and learning. In 2019, they bought a company called Tableau for $15.7 billion to help people understand data better.

In 2020, Salesforce joined a special group of big companies called the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company also bought Slack in 2020 for $27.7 billion to help companies talk to each other better.

Salesforce changed its official name to "Salesforce, Inc." in April 2022. Later that year, they started working with Meta Platforms to let people chat with companies using WhatsApp.

In January 2023, Salesforce had to let go of some workers because they had hired too many people during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also closed some offices. In January 2024, they let go of 700 more workers worldwide.

Services

Salesforce offers tools to help businesses connect with their customers. These include Sales Cloud for sales teams, Service Cloud for customer support, Marketing Cloud for advertising, Commerce Cloud for online shopping, and Platform for building new programs. They also have a tool called Slack for teamwork.

Salesforce has added smart tools using artificial intelligence. In 2023, they let businesses use a smart helper in Slack. Later, they created helpers to help with health tasks and customer service jobs. By 2024, they introduced chatbots to help customers.

Salesforce Platform lets developers create new programs that work with Salesforce. Users can find extra tools and services in the Salesforce AppExchange, an online store for business programs. Trailhead is a free learning site with classes about Salesforce tools.

In the past, Salesforce owned Desk.com for help desk support and Do.com for task management, but these are no longer offered.

Acquisitions

2006–2015

In 2006, Salesforce bought Sendia, a mobile web service company, and Kieden, an online advertising company. In 2007, it bought Koral, a content management service. In 2008, Salesforce bought Instranet. In 2010, Salesforce bought Jigsaw, a cloud-based data service, Heroku, a Ruby application platform, and Activa Live Chat, a live chat software provider. In 2011, Salesforce bought Dimdim, a web conferencing platform, Radian6, a social media tracking company, and Rypple, a performance management software company. Rypple was later called Work.com. In 2012, Salesforce bought Buddy Media, a social media marketer, and GoInstant, a browser collaboration startup.

In 2013, Salesforce bought ExactTarget, an email marketer, for $2.5 billion. In 2014, Salesforce bought RelateIQ, a data company. In 2015, Salesforce bought several companies, including Toopher, a mobile authentication company, Tempo, an AI calendar app, and MinHash, an AI platform. The company also bought SteelBrick, a software company.

2016–present

In 2016, Salesforce bought Demandware, a cloud-based provider of e-commerce services, and Quip, a word processing app. In 2017, the company bought Sequence, a user experience design agency. In 2018, Salesforce bought several companies, including MuleSoft, a cloud service company, as well as Rebel, an email services provider, and Datorama, an AI marketing platform.

In 2019, Salesforce bought analytics software company Tableau for $15.7 billion. Slack Technologies was bought for $27.7 billion in 2021. Salesforce also made smaller purchases between 2019 and 2021, including ClickSoftware, consulting firm Acumen Solutions, CRM firm Vlocity, privacy compliance startup Phennecs, and robotic process automation firm Servicetrace.

Salesforce bought Slack-bot maker Troops.ai in July 2022.

In September 2023, Salesforce bought Airkit.ai, a creator of AI-powered customer service applications and experiences. In December 2023, Salesforce bought Spiff, an automated commission management platform.

In September 2024, Salesforce bought data management firm Own for $1.9 billion, and enterprise management platform Zoomin. Salesforce also bought PredictSpring and Tenyx in 2024.

In June 2025, Salesforce announced plans to buy data management platform Informatica for approximately $8 billion. The deal improved Salesforce's data integration and governance capabilities. Earlier talks in 2024 failed due to disagreements over price and deal structure.

On November 18, 2025, Salesforce completed its purchase of Informatica for approximately $8 billion in equity value. The deal finished earlier than the original early-2026 target. By February 2026, Salesforce reported that Informatica had already started helping its financial results.

Operations

Salesforce is based in San Francisco at the Salesforce Tower. The company has offices around the world, including places like Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Sydney, and Tokyo.

Standard & Poor's added Salesforce to the S&P 500 Index in 2008. In 2020, Salesforce joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, taking the place of ExxonMobil.

Salesforce’s culture is inspired by ‘Ohana’, a Hawaiian idea about family and community. The company tries to support its workers and everyone affected by its business.

In 2008, Salesforce changed its computer systems to Dell servers. In 2012, the company planned to build a data center in the UK, which opened in 2014. In 2016, Salesforce began using Amazon Web Services in some countries.

Cybersecurity incidents

2007 Phishing attack

In November 2007, some customers got messages that looked like bills from Salesforce. These messages were tricks to get information. An employee's details were taken by talking to people, not because of a problem with the software.

2022 Heroku OAuth token theft (Salesforce subsidiary)

On April 13, 2022, a website told Heroku that someone had gotten into their systems using a special code. Heroku quickly stopped the codes and told customers to change their passwords.

2025-2026 ShinyHunters targeted campaigns against Salesforce

A group has done many big attacks to try to steal information from Salesforce and its customers. Experts from Google, Salesforce, and a government agency noticed this.

• UNC6040 Modified Data Loader / Vishing - The group tricked employees into putting bad software on their computers. This took details and let the group get into many places. Salesforce said this was because people were tricked, not because of a problem with their software.
• ShinyHunters/UNC6395 threat actors got special codes through connections with other software. Salesforce and the other software stopped these codes.
• ShinyHunters/UNC6395 threat actors got special codes through another connection. Salesforce and the other software stopped these connections.
• Salesforce warned about problems with settings in their software. The group claimed they broke into many companies.

Controversies

In 2017, two Salesforce security engineers lost their jobs after giving a talk at a technology event. They talked about a special tool they made for testing computer security, but the company asked them not to share it.

In 2018, a group that helps immigrants and refugees turned down a big donation from Salesforce. They did this because Salesforce worked with a government group that handles immigration.

A report in 2019 showed that Salesforce didn’t pay any federal taxes on its profits in 2018.

In 2023, Salesforce had to let go of 8,000 employees because they had hired too many people during a time when many people were staying home. At the same time, it was reported that a famous actor, Matthew McConaughey, was being paid to help promote the company.

In September 2025, Salesforce cut about 4,000 customer service jobs after introducing AI tools to help with customer support.

In February 2026, Salesforce announced more job cuts, affecting about 1,000 employees in different departments.

Also in February 2026, during a big company meeting, the CEO made some jokes about a government group. This upset many employees.

Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce Ventures started in 2009 when Salesforce began investing in new businesses. By August 2018, they had invested over $1 billion in 275 different companies. Some of these companies help with online sales, smart technology, stopping online fraud, and making work easier.

In 2021, these investments helped Salesforce gain $2.17 billion. By September 2024, Salesforce increased its fund for new technology companies to $1 billion. So far, Salesforce Ventures has put $5 billion into companies in 27 countries.

Office locations

Salesforce has many big offices around the world. Some of these offices are in San Francisco, Indianapolis, London, Sydney, Chicago, and New York in the US. They also have an office in Singapore.