Bret Taylor steps down as co-CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff stays on as CEO

Salesforce said Wednesday that Bret Taylor, the endeavor bundle maker's vice-chair and co-CEO, volition measurement down connected Jan. 31, 2023, leaving Marc Benioff, its co-founder and different co-CEO, to beryllium the sole idiosyncratic successful complaint of the company.

It's a astonishment fixed that Benioff had intimately embraced Taylor, who sold FriendFeed to Facebook genitor Meta and helped to make Google Maps, arsenic a younger exertion leader. Taylor played a cardinal relation successful Salesforce's bid to acquire Slack for $27.1 billion, its largest transaction to date. Many onlookers saw Taylor arsenic the idiosyncratic who could 1 time instrumentality implicit for Benioff arsenic the caput of Salesforce.

Exactly 1 twelvemonth ago, Salesforce promoted Taylor from his positions of president and main operating serviceman to beryllium co-CEO alongside Benioff. At that time, Benioff described Taylor arsenic "a phenomenal manufacture person who has been instrumental successful creating unthinkable occurrence for our customers and driving innovation passim our company." Two months ago, Benioff and Taylor were speaking unneurotic onstage astatine Salesforce's lawsuit league Dreamforce successful San Francisco.

The announcement comes astir 3 years aft Keith Block, an Oracle executive, left arsenic co-CEO of the company. In February 2020, Keith Block departed arsenic co-CEO. Block had been the company's operating main earlier being promoted successful 2018.

"I americium grateful for six fantastic years astatine Salesforce," Taylor said successful a statement. "Marc was my mentor good earlier I joined Salesforce and the accidental to spouse with him to pb the astir important bundle institution successful the satellite is career-defining. After a batch of reflection, I've decided to instrumentality to my entrepreneurial roots. Salesforce has ne'er been much applicable to customers, and with its best-in-class absorption squad and the institution executing connected each cylinders, present is the close clip for maine to measurement away."

Taylor joined Salesforce done the company's acquisition of Taylor's productivity bundle startup Quip successful 2016. With the deal, helium had transitioned from advertising-supported products to a services that businesses could subscribe to.

It's been a engaged twelvemonth for Taylor, arsenic helium was president of Twitter heading into Elon Musk's acquisition of the societal networking company, a woody completed past month. In an interrogation successful September, Taylor said that the woody "doesn't travel up a lot" successful Salesforce lawsuit meetings.

Benioff told CNBC that helium liked the thought of having idiosyncratic stock the CEO relation truthful they could person a "divide and conquer strategy" and truthful helium could walk clip investing, doing philanthropy and mentoring different concern leaders.

Taylor made $22.8 cardinal successful full compensation successful fiscal 2022, mostly from banal awards, according to the company's latest proxy filing. That's up from $13.9 cardinal the anterior year. The median wage for a Salesforce worker successful the past twelvemonth was $181,612, the filing said.

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