#Marc Benioff

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ahmed Baba:

After Donald Trump won in 2016, there was shock and widespread resistance as Democrats, foreign leaders, and the business world grappled with the unexpected. Now, a decade into the Trump era, there is a pervasive understanding of how he operates. This transactional President-elect is easily influenced by money, flattery, and displays of obedience. Post-2024 election, efforts to manipulate and appease Trump are already underway. Multiple foreign leaders, business executives, media outlets, and even some Democrats are seeking to cozy up to Trump in an effort to garner favorable treatment or to avoid retribution. There’s a fine line between appeasing Trump for existential reasons, as foreign leaders are understandably doing, and publicly bending the knee out of self-interest in a way that emboldens a wannabe authoritarian. The latter is what’s happening with some business leaders and media outlets.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has called this “the Great Capitulation.” While a lot of this is certainly capitulation, it’s also the kind of classic corruption, influence-peddling, and cronyism I wrote about in my recent article. But these efforts will only yield short-term results, as they enable a president with authoritarian ambitions.

Let’s start with the CEOs who have made quick moves to get on Trump’s good side. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are donating $1 million each to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. Zuckerberg, who Trump previously threatened to jail, went as far as to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, dine with him, and reportedly held his hand over his heart as a version of the national anthem sung by the January 6 choir played.

These donations to Trump go far beyond simply showing support in exchange for the incoming windfall the renewal of the Trump tax cuts will give them. Trump has had a contentious relationship with Zuckerberg and Bezos in the past, and Altman’s OpenAI has an ongoing lawsuit with Elon Musk. Bezos is also likely seeking expanded subsidies for his space company, Blue Origin, which competes for government money with Musk’s SpaceX. All of these companies will be impacted by the regulatory environment or lack thereof, the Trump Administration implements.

Earlier this month, Jeff Bezos attended The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit and told Andrew Ross Sorkin he’s hopeful about the Trump Administration, specifically due to deregulation: “I’m actually very optimistic this time around. ... I’m very hopeful about his — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. My point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him.”

Billionaires clearly see themselves as beneficiaries of the incoming Trump Administration, just like the first term. Except this time, they aren’t doing any initial performative opposition to Trump and are openly embracing him from the start. They appear to believe they’ll thrive in the oligarchic system Trump is seeking to cultivate, but authoritarianism doesn’t end well for anyone, as historian and authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed out in her latest piece. But nonetheless, the people who actually have the means to withstand Trump’s wrath are kissing his ring. An instance where a billionaire and media outlet currying favor with Trump intersect is TIME Magazine. The outlet still has phenomenal journalists, but its owner just undercut their journalistic integrity. Last week, TIME Magazine declared Trump its “Person of the Year” and published an unhinged interview, which, of course, isn’t unusual or worthy of criticism. What’s unusual is the fact that Trump celebrated it by ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and TIME owner and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff enthusiastically congratulated him.

Naming someone TIME’s “Person of the Year” doesn’t automatically indicate it’s an endorsement. That person may simply have been the most influential and not necessarily a good person. For example, in 1938, TIME named Adolf Hitler, and it was far from an endorsement. However, when it comes to Trump, Benioff removed any doubt that this cover was, in fact, an endorsement. We’ve seen a lot of obedience in advance from far too many media outlets, as historian Timothy Snyder puts it. From Bezos blocking The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris to a similar move at the Los Angeles Times, this was happening even before Trump won. Now, it’s kicking into a higher gear as Trump ramps up his threats against the media, feeling empowered by a recent unexpected legal win.

ABC News sent a jolt through the media ecosystem when they decided to settle a defamation suit with Trump that they could’ve won. ABC News, which is owned by Disney, came to a $15 million agreement after Trump sued over statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos. When covering the E. Jean Carroll case, Stephanopoulos said that Trump was found liable for “rape,” even though the official ruling found him liable for sexual abuse. 

[...] This ABC settlement has clearly made Trump feel empowered. In a press conference on Monday, Trump mused about how he plans to sue more media companies, specifically calling out The Des Moines Register for their Ann Selzer poll that erroneously found Harris winning Iowa. On Monday night, Trump made good on his threat, filing a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannet, claiming fraud and election interference. So, Trump has sued a news organization for simply publishing a poll. It’s an unbelievable overreach. Make no mistake, this is meant to scare not only mainstream media outlets but also independent media and individual journalists who have fewer legal resources. We can’t let his threats change our coverage of the truth. Fearless media will be increasingly necessary over the coming years.

[...] During Trump’s first term, when he met resistance to his crazy proposals, he would soon get distracted and move on to another fight - with the plot to overturn the 2020 election being the exception to this. If Trump’s authoritarian maneuvers are enabled with zero pushback in a second term, from both within and outside of his administration, we will surely see more of them. Pushing back is a necessity. There are going to be plenty of junctures during the second Trump Administration when it’ll be easier to look the other way from an authoritarian action. There will be moments when appeasing him is the path of least resistance, and the fear of retribution feels insurmountable. But it’s in those moments when it matters most to speak out.

What we need right now is courage. We need business leaders to put their country over their short-term profits and actually embrace the principles they once claimed to have. We need journalists to remain fearless and steadfast in what will be a tumultuous four years for press freedom. We need Democrats to act like a real opposition party, both at the federal and state level, and refuse to yield to Trump’s extremist agenda. And we need everyday Americans to not give up on advocating for a better America. [...] Unfortunately, as I’ve outlined in this piece, many people and organizations are falling in line instead of standing their ground. And we’re already seeing some influential content creators who made their name as anti-Trumpers beginning to make their pivot to a pro-MAGA stance. I won’t name names because I don’t want to feed their clout chase, but you’ve likely heard of them.

Ahmed Baba has a well-written piece on how anti-Trump forces should show real courage and not fold like cheap suits in how to respond to his 2nd term.

[procurement-insights]

What Are Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff's "Digital Labor" Boundaries?

Agentic AI or any tech-driven AI will not overcome poor communication and collaboration within an organization.

I will also tag Matthew Berman in the videos above (Satya Nadella) and below, where the Salesforce CEO discusses “digital labor.”2025 is not the year of the “Agentic Agent.” It is the year of the human-versus-tech-led Agent-based development and implementation model.In other words, after more than 40 years in high-tech and procurement, the industry’s discussion of agentic AI and digital labor is…

[youthchronical]

Bret Taylor’s AI startup Sierra raises funding at $4.5 billion valuation

Artificial intelligence startup Sierra, co-founded by ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, is more than quadrupling its valuation to $4.5 billion in a fresh funding round. The San Francisco-based company, which was valued at $1 billion in January, raised $175 million in a funding round led by Greenoaks Capital. The Information reported earlier this month that Sierra was in the midst of raising…

[secretstalks]

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Proclaims: 'The World is Shifting Towards the Indian Era'

At the annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared that the world is entering an “Indian era,” highlighting India's growing global significance. He noted, “There is no denying that India is about to enter a truly remarkable period. It’s a really exciting opportunity, as you can see.”

Benioff expressed strong confidence in Salesforce's expansion in India, where the company has over 11,000 employees. He emphasized the critical role of Indian operations in engineering and market engagement, pointing to major clients like the Bajaj Group. He praised Arundhati Bhattacharya, former SBI Chairperson and now head of Salesforce India, for her leadership in driving this growth. While Benioff did not disclose specific workforce expansion plans, he underscored India’s vital importance in Salesforce’s future strategy.

Additionally, Salesforce introduced its partner network, which includes industry giants like AWS, Google, IBM, and Workday, as well as "Agentforce," an autonomous AI tool aimed at optimizing business processes. He highlighted a collaboration with NVIDIA to provide advanced autonomous AI agents for enterprise applications.

Benioff predicted that these innovations would transform sales, marketing, and commerce, describing them as a significant leap beyond traditional chatbots. Addressing concerns about potential job losses due to AI, he reassured that there are pathways for workforce transition, noting that some companies have already successfully navigated this change.

To further strengthen its presence in India, Salesforce announced the appointment of Rahul Dravid, the celebrated Indian cricket star, as its first brand ambassador. Dravid will help Indian businesses leverage the Salesforce CRM platform to foster growth, aligning with the “Growing With India” campaign that promotes Salesforce’s comprehensive, user-friendly CRM solutions designed to elevate Indian enterprises.

READ MORE

[toyotabedzrock]

Billionaire Marc Benioff is buying up land in Hawaii. And no one knows why : NPR

Billionaire Marc Benioff is buying up land in Hawaii. And no one knows why : NPR https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1232564250/billionaire-benioff-buys-hawaii-land-salesforce

[wocado]

The secret to successful hiring ~ @Benioff

The secret to successful hiring is this:

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[milliondollarbaby87]

Stay (2005) Review

When Sam Foster a psychiatrist takes over the case of Henry Letham he must attempt to stop him from committing suicide while attempting to keep a grip on his own reality. ⭐️⭐️ Continue reading Untitled

[mirrorreview]

Marc Benioff, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Salesforce is not only a successful entrepreneur but also a renowned philanthropist. His company Salesforce, founded in March 1999, is one of the fastest-growing cloud companies and is the first cloud company to cross the mark of $ 5 Billion in revenue.

[wolfliving]

Dead AI IoT

Humane AI finally shuts down, HP pays $116m for the pieces — not including the Ai Pin

By David Gerard on 19 February 2025

Humane, creator of the fabulous and literally nonfunctional Ai Pin gadget — that's "Ai," not "AI" — has finally thrown in the towel.

After Humane took $230 million in venture funding and tried and failed to sell itself for $1 billion, Hewlett-Packard is paying $116 million to acqui-hire most of the team and get Humane’s software and patents. [Humane, archive]

There was also some burbling from HP about “an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms,” which probably means floundering a bit then selling the software on once again, as they did with Palm and WebOS.

We’re sure that Humane’s venture capital backers — including Sam Altman, Microsoft, and Marc Benioff — will be delighted that minus-50% is now the expected realized return on AI investments in the bubble.

HP is notably not taking on the Ai Pin itself — probably because it’s completely useless and doesn’t work. The hardware overheats and fails, the projected display isn’t visible in sunlight, and the software chains together LLMs to fail to understand or translate conversations. Also, it might catch fire.

The remaining Ai Pins will work until February 28, when the back-end servers at Humane shut down. After that date, you can ... check the battery level? Pretty good for a $700 gadget with a $24/month subscription. We’re sure both customers will be delighted. ]Humane, archive; Humane, archive]

[youthchronical]

Marc Benioff is in talks to sell media company Time to Antenna Group

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attends the TIME100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on April 26, 2023. Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images Greek media company the Antenna Group is in talks to acquire fellow media company Time from Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff, according to people familiar with the matter. No deal is assured and the talks are still early, said the people, who asked…

[misfitwashere]

The jig is up

Global corporations are now ending the pretense that they’re socially responsible. That’s progress, in a way. 

ROBERT REICH

JAN 21

Friends,

The World Economic Forum begins its 54th annual confab of CEOs and billionaires this week in Davos, Switzerland. Among its attendees are some who attended Trump’s inauguration yesterday to kiss his derriere, and then promptly private-jetted to the Swiss Alps. 

Since its inception, the Davos confab has justified itself — and thereby sought to justify global corporate capitalism — by embracing “corporate social responsibility.”

The basic idea is that big global corporations can — and should — be good for everyone. Sure, they may make a few CEOs and big shareholders fabulously wealthy. But they can and should also protect the planet and spread their financial gains. 

Hence, Davos attendees’ annual commitments, in myriad sessions and presentations, to “ESG” (environmental, social, and governance — that is, sustainability), “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and global and social responsibility in general. 

In recent years, Davos has become a choice venue for splashy corporate announcements of such commitments. 

In 2020, Marc Benioff of Salesforce issued a goal to plant a trillion trees. The same year, Larry Fink of BlackRock (which manages more than $10 trillion in investments) announced a series of initiatives to invest in ways that better protect the environment. The CEOs of JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs trumpeted their Net-Zero Banking Alliance. 

Other corporate poobahs have used the venue to make grand promises to share profits with their workers, their communities, and the less fortunate around the world. Jamie Dimon, then head of the Business Roundtable, touted his and the Roundtable’s pledges to their workers, their neighborhoods, and the nation as a whole. 

But wait. These are exactly the goals Trump and MAGA have railed against, calling them “woke” capitalism. 

Now that CEOs of the largest corporations in the world are demonstrating cringe-worthy cowardice when it comes to all things Trump, what’s to become of corporate social responsibility? 

Presto! Davos has gone through an ideological cleansing. This time, few if any sessions will be devoted to ESG or DEI. The perennial theme of “corporate social responsibility” has almost vanished. 

The CEOs who used to trumpet their corporate social responsibility won’t be doing so this year. (BlackRock’s Fink has already expressed regret over becoming the face of ESG). JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs have departed their Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

Instead, after years of calling for “responsible” global corporate capitalism, the CEOs gathering in Davos are now openly focusing on their bottom lines.

In other words, the jig is up. The pretense is over. The blather about corporate social responsibility is revealed for what it really is and always has been — PR designed to make the public believe that big global corporations care about anything other than making as much money as possible, as soon as possible. 

I, for one, think this is a good thing. 

All the artifice about corporate responsibility, echoed year after year at Davos and by the Business Roundtable and in business schools, gave lawmakers who wanted one an excuse to sit on their hands, because, they’d say, big global corporations can be trusted to do what’s right. 

The truth is, they can’t. They never could. They won’t sacrifice shareholder returns to tackling climate change or social injustice. 

Anyway, these are jobs for governments responsible to the people, not for corporations responsible to shareholders. 

The Trump regime won’t do a damned thing about these problems, of course. If anything, it will take us and much of the world backward. (Trump is expected to appear at Davos via videoconference, and god knows what he’ll say.)

But at least we will know where the blame lies. And we will have the chance in future years — I fervently hope — to elect governments that tackle them head-on. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Altman has had a career that any Silicon Valley exec would absolutely kill for, and he hasn’t accomplished a single worthwhile thing. He founded one failed company, ran a factory that bought predatory amounts of equity for virtually nothing from every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do, then founded a company to build a product that he himself believes could eventually destroy humanity. He managed to do such a bad job organizing that company that he nearly got it taken away from him by the guy who runs the Christian babies Q&A site and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wife before he was rescued by a nightmare blunt rotation of Microsoft, Marc Benioff’s Number One Boy, and Larry Fucking Summers. And the Quora guy even got to stick around! -Today in Tabs

[1americanconservative]

@DefiyantlyFree

Democrats, have all the sudden become very worried about becoming an oligarchy where billionaires control the world.

Here is a list of billionaires who are exclusively contributing to the Democratic Party:

- George Soros

- Michael Bloomberg

- Reid Hoffman

- Hansjorg Weiss

- Tom Steyer

- Sam Bankman - Fried

- JB Pritzker

- Marc Benioff

- Neil Blum

- Mark Cuban

- Laurene Powell Jobs

- Bill Gates Here is the list that have contributed to Republicans in the last year:

- Elon Musk

- Zuckerberg (like a week ago)

- Besos (like a week ago) Oh yes, be afraid of the oligarchs, but not the ones on the right. The ones on the left who have been systemically funneling all of their money through 501(c)(4)s that have been purchasing elections by destroying election integrity measures across the country, investing in insane ballot measures, and overall funneling $2 billion worth of dark money per election cycle.

Please tell me some more about oligarchy Bernie Sanders, from one of your 4 mansions no less.

[wocado]

We strive always to have ~ @Benioff

We strive always to have

business, business quotes, Marc Benioff, Marc Benioff quotes #PICTUREQUOTES, #QUOTES