Salesforce CEO Teases AI Startup Subleasing Former Slack Office Building
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, made headlines during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday evening with his remarks about the city of San Francisco and an unreported real estate announcement. Benioff, known for his connection to the city where Salesforce was founded, boasted about downtown San Francisco and teased a major artificial intelligence (AI) startup subleasing a former Slack office building.
During the call, Benioff expressed his excitement for the upcoming Dreamforce conference, set to take place from September 12 to 14 at the Moscone Center. He promised to showcase the city’s downtown and invited attendees to experience the incredible offerings of Salesforce.
In line with the conference’s focus on AI, Benioff dedicated a significant portion of his remarks to the topic. He revealed that Salesforce has a $500 million fund for investing in generative AI startups and highlighted the firm’s support for companies like Anthropic, Cohere, and Hugging Face. Additionally, he disclosed that an AI startup had subleased one of Slack’s old buildings, positioning downtown San Francisco as the epicenter of AI development.
While Benioff did not reveal the name of the AI startup, he expressed his enthusiasm about the growing AI scene in San Francisco. He also commended OpenAI’s astounding $1 billion-a-year revenue pace and expressed pride in seeing the growth of AI companies in the city.
However, Benioff’s comments took a different tone from his interview with the San Francisco Time.news the day before. In that interview, he hinted that Dreamforce could be the last conference held in San Francisco if the city’s homelessness and drug use issues impacted the event. San Francisco has been dealing with a homelessness crisis and drug overdose emergency, leading to concerns among tech leaders about the downtown area.
During the earnings call, an analyst from Goldman Sachs referenced Benioff’s comments about the possibility of Dreamforce not returning to San Francisco. However, Benioff did not respond directly to the comment.
Benioff’s statements have sparked interest among industry observers, particularly regarding the undisclosed AI startup and the potential impact on future Dreamforce conferences. As the CEO continues to champion the city where Salesforce was born, the tech community eagerly awaits further updates on the company’s AI initiatives and the fate of San Francisco as the host city for Dreamforce.
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