Latest / Best of: Features / At Dreamforce, Marc Benioff is king. But can he defend his throne?

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At Dreamforce, Marc Benioff is king. But can he defend his throne? · Best of: Features

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  At Dreamforce Mark Benioff is king, but can't he defend his throne?
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  Written by Matthew Brown This article is being read by an automated
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  voice, generated by Everlet. It's that time again when forty thousand people
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  from around the world congregate in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood
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  for Salesforce's annual customer mega conference, Dreamforce. It's a spectacle. Howard
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  Street in front of Moscone Center is closed and covered in fake
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  grass. Humanoid robots dance for onlookers. Thousands of visitors sport their blue
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  attendee lanyards, even after hours for some reason, as they congregate in
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  bars and restaurants across the city. And when DJs aren't bumping their
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  mixes non stop, it's because a surprise concert has taken the stage,
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  with Cold War kids performing Tuesday and Ziggy Marley on Wednesday. It's
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  also a place where tech CEOs flock like migratory birds. Anthropics Dario
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  Amaday and OpenAI's Sam Altman talk about pacing artificial intelligence development, while
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  NVIDIA's Jensen Huang is calling bulls tea on Doomerism, and as the
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  folks sitting and watching them push and shove to get a seat
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  as if they were trying to get barricade spots at outside lands,
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  Mark Benioff is at the center of it all. The Salesforce CEO
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  and founder is larger than life, and not just because he's six
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  foot five. In a lot of ways he's not like the tech
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  leaders who are often hogging the limelight. For starters he's charismatic and
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  likable, two traits that are often hard to come by with the
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  tech elite. At his keynote address on Tuesday, Benioff commanded the room
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  as he jaunted around, choosing to pace the floor around attendees instead
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  of speaking from a podium. There's no question he's in charge. After
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  all, it's a conference for his company. Benioff energy comes as his
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  company is facing an uncertain future. Artificial intelligence is changing the software
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  game. Salesforce has spent much of this year dispelling fears of the
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  Saspokalypse, or the downfall of software as a service as AI becomes
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  more powerful. Benioff called the threat crazy nonsense in his Tuesday keynote
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  speech, and the company just launched its own AI product powered by
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  Anthropics Claude. Though Salesforce is massive, serving over one hundred fifty thousand
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  customers worldwide and touching just about every industry, cloud-based customer relationship management
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  isn't sexy. Meanwhile in the AI world, CEOs like Amade, Altman, Huang,
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  Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk are literally debating whose tech is going
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  to kill us all first, if at all. Despite than Benioff looked
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  like a king on Tuesday. He towered over Amade, who spent the
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  past week telling the entire world that humans were on track to
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  go extinct in the near future. He boasted about Salesforce's contributions to
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  San Francisco, including millions to the city's school district, hospitals, and police.
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  So far he's avoided controversy this year, a better start than in
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  twenty twenty five, when he had to apologize for supporting sending the
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  National Guard to San Francisco to rein in crime. He also urged
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  more of his tech brethren to be just as philanthropic to the
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  Bay Area as he has, noting that he extended his giving across
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  the Bay to Oakland because we couldn't have a great San Francisco
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  without a great Oakland. At a private media event following The keynote,
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  he took extra time to answer questions from a diverse media scrum,
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  even showing off a little Japanese. But there was a small moment
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  at the keynote, so easy to miss, that was telling of Benioff
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  place in the tech industry. It started when Huang was on the
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  microphone. The NVIDIA chief turned over his shoulder and told Benioff, Just
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  follow me. The crowd laughed, and Benioff responded, You've got this. Jensen,
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  we're all following you, bro. Just as he said that, he put
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  two hands on Huang's shoulders to steer him. In a split second
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  Huang shook off Benioff and stepped ahead of him, just before he
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  hesitated and put his arm around his back. It was a strange
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  sequence, a sort of tug of war of showing who's in charge,
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  at center stage. Huang took control of the room, Benioff tried to
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  rein him in, and the two met in the middle, continuing their
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  walk around the room side by side. Again small enough to miss,
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  but big enough that it came up in conversation at a Dreamforce
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  after party later that night. By no means was Benioff knocked off
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  his throne. After all, it was only five seconds out of three
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  full days of what is essentially the Tech World's homecoming week. Not
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  to mention Benioff has been on top for years. His name is
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  on UCSF's Children's Hospital in Oakland, his Salesforce Tower defines the city
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  skyline, and the park atop the Salesforce Transit Center is one of
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  downtown's more pleasant spots. His company is doing well amid fears that
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  it's over for software. But for just a moment somebody else became
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  the star at Benioff's own show. Dreamforce is the biggest stage possible
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  for the company, and Benioff himself, to show it's still a big
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  player as AI takes over. Perhaps it's inevitable that eventually software is
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  phased out, just as any tech has to evolve. But until that
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  happens, and while Benioff still has his crown, can he try to
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  steer his colleagues, or will he get shrugged off? That remains to
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  be seen. Attending Dreamforce and want to talk. Contact tech reporter Matthew
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  Brown securely at Matthew dot brown at skate dot com or Matthew
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  Brownskate dot one one on Signal.