Salesforce's Anthropic Bet Pays Off as Valuation Soars to $5 Billion
Salesforce's $50 million investment in Anthropic has turned out to be one of its most lucrative bets. The company was initially shut out of OpenAI due to Microsoft's deep financial ties and had expressed interest in investing but was not allowed to do so.
After being blocked from OpenAI, Salesforce turned its attention to Anthropic in 2023 and invested $50 million at a reported pre-money valuation of $4.1 billion. The company has since poured more than $300 million into the Claude maker across multiple funding rounds.
Benioff framed the pivot as a matter of necessity rather than prescience, but the outcome has been anything but modest. 'I think we'll make not just billions but maybe tens of billions of dollars on it,' he said, referring to the potential windfall when Anthropic eventually lists on public markets.