Salesforce

For the second quarter of fiscal 2027, ended July 31, 2026, Salesforce reported revenue of $11.3 billion, up 11 percent year over year, including a $456 million contribution from Informatica. Subscription and support revenue was $10.8 billion. Current remaining performance obligation was $33.5 billion, up 14 percent. The company said Agentforce and Data 360 annual recurring revenue reached nearly $3.9 billion, with Agentforce ARR alone above $1.5 billion. It raised full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion.^[1]

Salesforce incorporated on March 8, 1999. Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff built the first version of the CRM from a rented one-bedroom apartment at 1449 Montgomery Street on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. By the end of its first year the company had 40 employees. In 2000 the dot-com bust forced layoffs of 20 percent of the workforce, and the product officially launched on February 7, 2000 at an event themed around 'The End of Software'. In November 2001 Benioff was named Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; the company reported $22.4 million of revenue for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2002.^[2]

The company's own timeline marks the big acquisitions: MuleSoft in 2018, Tableau in 2019, Slack (agreement in 2020, completed in 2021), and in 2025 definitive agreements for five companies including Informatica. Salesforce was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average effective August 31, 2020. For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, revenue reached $13.3 billion and the company had more than 36,000 employees.^[2]

Salesforce completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on June 23, 2004, raising $110 million at $11 per share. In the fiscal year ending January 31, 2005 it reported $176 million of revenue, had 767 employees and 13,900 customers. The company's history page does not name its pre-IPO venture investors, and none are given here.^[2]

Salesforce Ventures is the company's corporate venture arm and has been investing in enterprise technology for 15 years. In October 2025, a year after expanding its AI fund to $1 billion, it said it had deployed over $850 million of that fund across 35 AI-first companies and was on track to fully invest it by the end of 2025. Named portfolio companies include Anthropic, Cohere, ElevenLabs, Protect AI (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Together AI, Runway, fal AI, World Labs and Writer.^[3]

The Anthropic position is the standout. Bloomberg reported in June 2026 that Salesforce's stake in Anthropic was worth approximately $5 billion after repeated investments since early 2023, when it first participated with roughly $50 million. Salesforce's total strategic investments were valued at $7.8 billion at the end of April 2026 per SEC filings, before Anthropic's $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation; after that revaluation the Anthropic stake alone represents roughly two-thirds of the strategic investment portfolio. Salesforce Ventures itself has said the 2023 bet on a research-heavy startup was not obvious at the time.^[4]

Recent deals reported by Calcalist's CTech: in March 2026 Salesforce Ventures invested an estimated tens of millions in cloud-security company Upwind at a $1.6 billion valuation, two months after Upwind's $250 million round; and on September 1, 2026 Salesforce led a $166 million investment in HR platform HiBob at a $3.2 billion valuation, up from $2.7 billion in HiBob's prior round roughly three years earlier.^[5],[6]

Marc Benioff is Chair and CEO and a co-founder. Robin Washington is President and Chief Financial and Operating Officer. Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff co-founded the company with Benioff in 1999. At Salesforce Ventures, Paul Drews is Managing Partner.^[1],[2],[3]