Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says one of his company's potentially most valuable AI investments began as a second choice. On the Sources podcast, he told Alex Heath that Salesforce wanted to invest in OpenAI years ago but was unable to because of OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft.
Benioff described asking Sam Altman directly about investing. In Benioff's account, Altman said the Microsoft relationship prevented Salesforce from participating. That pushed Salesforce to spread its bets across other model companies, including Anthropic, France's Mistral and Japan's Sakana AI.
A blocked deal became a large Anthropic stake
Sources reports that Salesforce initially invested roughly $50 million in Anthropic in 2023, when the round carried a reported $4.1 billion pre-money valuation. It says Salesforce has since put more than $300 million into the company across multiple rounds.
Benioff now predicts the Anthropic position could produce “not just billions, but maybe tens of billions of dollars” in returns. That is his estimate, not a realized gain: the outcome depends on Anthropic's future valuation and any eventual liquidity event.
The relationship has also moved beyond financing. Sources notes that the companies' Claudeforce partnership makes Claude the default model in Slack, including Slackbot, and connects Salesforce sales workflows with Claude.
The episode illustrates how strategic restrictions around one frontier-model company can redirect both capital and product alliances. In Salesforce's case, being shut out of OpenAI did not end its model-company strategy; it widened it and ultimately made Anthropic a major financial and operating partner.
