Salesforce’s Benioff hypes up SF downtown just after Dreamforce threat

The billionaire executive boasted about the city’s downtown in his opening remarks on Salesforce’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday evening, stirred up hype for the Dreamforce conference — set to run Sept. 12 to 14 at the Moscone Center — and even teased an unreported real estate announcement: A major artificial intelligence startup has subleased an office building previously occupied by Slack.

“I’m looking forward to welcoming each and every one of you to Dreamforce,” he told the analysts and investors on the call. “I’m right now at the top of Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. We’re going to bring you up here. We’ll bring you through Moscone. We’ll show you our incredible downtown.”

In line with the conference’s theme and wider industry’s appetite, he devoted a sizable chunk of his comments to AI. Salesforce has a $500 million fund for investing in generative AI startups, and the firm has already poured money into several, including Anthropic, Cohere and Hugging Face. Benioff shared the news about an AI startup subleasing one of Salesforce-owned Slack’s old buildings — SFGATE reported that Slack put up 200,000 square feet for sublease at 45 Fremont St. and moved workers out of its 230,000-square-foot office at 500 Howard St. in February. 

“I’m not allowed to say who it is, but I couldn’t be more excited about that because we’re really seeing downtown San Francisco become AI central,” Benioff said.

He also praised OpenAI’s $1 billion-a-year revenue pace, as reported in The Information, saying, “It’s just awesome to see this growth and especially proud that they’re right here in our hometown of San Francisco, which is becoming the No. 1 AI city in the world. Very excited for our city.”

Benioff added that he “can’t wait” to show attendees “what’s happening in Salesforce, what’s happening in AI, what’s happening in San Francisco.”

The billionaire’s comments are part of a running theme; the CEO has long linked his massive customer management software company with the city where it was founded. But they represented a major course correction from the day prior.

In a Tuesday interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Benioff said that September’s Dreamforce conference, set to bring 40,000 people to the city, could be the last in San Francisco if the conference “is impacted by the current situation with homelessness and drug use.” (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.) 

The city has grappled with an ongoing homelessness crisis and drug overdose emergency this year, and tech leaders have been particularly outspoken in their anxieties about San Francisco’s downtown. Benioff posted after 2022’s conference that no safety incidents had been reported.

An analyst from Goldman Sachs referenced the threat of Dreamforce not returning to San Francisco during the Wednesday call’s question period, but Benioff did not respond to the comment in his answer.

Hear of anything happening at Salesforce or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.