Salesforce

Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff began developing Salesforce in a San Francisco apartment. The venture centered on delivering enterprise software over the internet through subscriptions, moving customer relationship management from locally installed applications toward cloud services.⁠[1]

Salesforce completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange at $11 per share, raising approximately $110 million.⁠[2]

The company launched AppExchange for third-party applications. Force.com followed in 2008, allowing customers to build and deploy applications on Salesforce’s architecture and extending the business into a platform ecosystem.⁠[2]

The company completed its acquisition of ExactTarget, bringing cross-channel marketing automation and campaign management into Marketing Cloud. Email, mobile and web marketing capabilities complemented its sales, service and social marketing tools, expanding its coverage of the customer lifecycle.⁠[3]

Salesforce completed its acquisition of MuleSoft, adding Anypoint Platform’s ability to connect applications, data and devices. Its API-based integration spans cloud and on-premises systems, including systems outside Salesforce, broadening the company’s enterprise integration capabilities.⁠[4]

The company completed its acquisition of Tableau, adding self-service analytics and visualization to Customer 360. Tableau retained its brand. The closing announcement also noted an ongoing UK competition review, during which the companies would remain operationally separate.⁠[5]

Salesforce completed its acquisition of Slack Technologies to combine workplace communication, applications and CRM data. The announcement retained the Slack brand and described connecting employees, customers and partners within everyday conversations and workflows.⁠[6]

The company announced plans to reduce its workforce by approximately 10% and close or reduce some offices, estimating $1.4–2.1 billion in charges. In an employee letter, Marc Benioff cited more cautious customer purchasing and acknowledged excessive pandemic-era hiring. The charges were estimates at announcement.⁠[7]

The company completed its acquisition of Informatica, adding data catalog, quality, governance, metadata and master-data-management capabilities. Integration plans covered Data 360, MuleSoft, Tableau and Agentforce, aiming to give fragmented enterprise data traceable and understandable business context.⁠[8]

For fiscal 2026, ended January 31, 2026, the company reported approximately $41.5 billion in revenue, up 10%, a 20.1% GAAP operating margin and about $15 billion in operating cash flow. Subscription and support contributed about 95% of annual revenue, with the remainder from professional services and other activities.⁠[9]

Revenue for the quarter ended July 31 was about $11.3 billion, up 11%, including $456 million from Informatica. The GAAP operating margin was 20.5%. Full-year revenue guidance increased to $46.1–46.4 billion; this was a forecast incorporating assumptions about pending transactions.⁠[10]

At Dreamforce, Salesforce announced AIforce, bringing its data, workflows and business rules into different AI interfaces. Initial experiences included Claudeforce, Slackforce and Agentforce Coworker. According to the company, requests inherit existing permissions and actions execute through Salesforce.⁠[11]

Salesforce and NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry announced Koa, a CRM reasoning model built on NVIDIA Nemotron for complex, multistep Agentforce workflows. It is positioned as a specialized enterprise model that uses business context to select tools and carry out tasks.⁠[12]

The company agreed to acquire Rune TechnologiesRune TechnologiesRune Technologies is a U.S. defense technology company developing the TyrOS military logistics platform and related software, sensors and data tools.Open the full entry to expand Missionforce’s military logistics capabilities. Closing was expected in fiscal Q4 2027, subject to customary conditions.⁠[13]

Salesforce products span sales, service, marketing, commerce and IT. Customer 360 supplies customer-facing applications and business workflows, while data and AI tools help teams share customer records and handle leads, service requests and routine work.⁠[14]

Sales Cloud organizes customer information, interactions and deal progress, supporting forecasting, automation and sales analysis. Related products cover sales performance, partner management and Revenue Cloud’s quoting, contracts and billing, extending workflows from prospecting through revenue management.⁠[15]

Agentforce Service, formerly Service Cloud, turns customer requests from email, phone and messaging into cases routed to service representatives. Organizations can configure service consoles and automation, using Einstein and Agentforce to assist responses, resolution and human handoffs.⁠[16]

Agentforce configures and runs agents for service, sales and employee support. Agent Builder combines instructions, actions, Flow automation and MuleSoft APIs. Observability tools monitor performance, and issues beyond an agent’s scope can be escalated to people. Deployment depends on enterprise data and configured permissions.⁠[17]

Data 360, formerly Data Cloud, combines customer interactions, structured records and documents, with unified profiles, identity resolution and segmentation. Zero-copy connections access data in platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks, while Agent Context Engine organizes records and unstructured material into business context.⁠[18]

The company’s 1-1-1 model commits 1% of employee time, equity and product to communities. Its programs include education grants, employee volunteering, discounted software for nonprofits, and technology, funding and expertise through Salesforce Accelerator.⁠[19]