Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff said the company's stake in Anthropic exists only because Microsoft's grip on OpenAI blocked a preferred investment, and he now values the fallback position in the tens of billions of dollars.
The Microsoft barrier
Benioff told the Sources Podcast on Tuesday that he had approached Sam Altman directly about investing in OpenAI. Altman declined, citing the Microsoft relationship that gives the software giant roughly 27 percent of OpenAI, rights to embed its technology across Microsoft products, and the ability to resell OpenAI models through Azure. Microsoft is also Salesforce's primary competitor in enterprise software.
A forced pivot
The rejection redirected Salesforce's capital toward Anthropic. Benioff characterized the move as a necessity rather than foresight. "We felt like, whoa, we can't go here, we're going to have to go everywhere else," he said, adding it was "not because we were so smart" and identified an overlooked winner.
The partnership deepens
The investment has since evolved into a close operating relationship. Salesforce's Slackbot and other new interfaces now run on Claude, Anthropic's flagship model. Benioff attributed the integration to the proximity forced by the equity stake. "It's because we have been pushed so close with Anthropic," he said.
The payoff scenario
Benioff estimated the stake could eventually yield "not just billions but maybe tens of billions of dollars." Salesforce has not disclosed the size of its holding. An Anthropic initial public offering would establish a public market value for the position and create a path to liquidity, though the timing of any listing remains uncertain. OpenAI is also weighing a public debut, but Altman has said it will not occur in 2026.