Benioff's Anthropic Bet Could Yield 'Tens of Billions' as Salesforce Integrates AI into Slack

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said his company's inability to invest in OpenAI led him to bet on Anthropic, which could make 'tens of billions' when it goes public.

In an interview with Alex Heath, Benioff explained that Salesforce had wanted exposure to OpenAI but was shut out by Microsoft's close relationship with the ChatGPT maker. This pushed him to look elsewhere in the frontier AI market and led to a $50 million investment in Anthropic at a reported $4.1 billion pre-money valuation in 2023.

Benedioff said Salesforce has since invested more than $300 million across multiple rounds, with the potential for tens of billions when Anthropic goes public. This is not just about investing, as Anthropic's AI model, Claude, is now integrated into Slack as the default model, powering Slackbot and allowing direct access to Salesforce workflows and data.

This move is also a response to the expected shift towards AI agents becoming the primary interface for business, which Benioff believes will reshape the SaaS industry. Recent results from Salesforce have provided a stronger backdrop, with record second-quarter revenue of $11.3 billion and Agentforce growth exceeding 240%.