At Dreamforce, Marc Benioff is king. But can he defend his throne?

It’s that time again when 40,000 people from around the world congregate in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood for Salesforce’s annual customer mega-conference, Dreamforce.

It’s a spectacle. Howard Street in front of Moscone Center is closed and covered in fake grass. Humanoid robots dance for onlookers. Thousands of visitors sport their blue attendee lanyards, even after hours for some reason as they congregate in bars and restaurants across the city. And when DJs aren’t bumping their mixes nonstop, it’s because a surprise concert has taken the stage, with Cold War Kids performing Tuesday and Ziggy Marley on Wednesday.

It’s also a place where tech CEOs flock like migratory birds. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman talk about pacing artificial intelligence development, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is calling bulls—t on doomerism. And as the folks sitting and watching them push and shove to get a seat as if they were trying to get barricade spots at Outside Lands, Marc Benioff is at the center of it all.

Article continues below this ad

The Salesforce CEO and founder is larger than life, and not just because he’s 6-foot-5. In a lot of ways, he’s not like the tech leaders who are often hogging the limelight. For starters, he’s charismatic and likeable, two traits that are often hard to come by with the tech elite. At his keynote address on Tuesday, Benioff commanded the room as he jaunted around, choosing to pace the floor around attendees instead of speaking from a podium. There’s no question he’s in charge. After all, it’s a conference for his company.

Benioff’s energy comes as his company is facing an uncertain future. Artificial intelligence is changing the software game. Salesforce has spent much of this year dispelling fears of the “SaaSpocalypse,” or the downfall of software as a service as AI becomes more powerful. Benioff called the threat “crazy nonsense” in his Tuesday keynote speech, and the company just launched its own AI product powered by Anthropic’s Claude. Though Salesforce is massive, serving over 150,000 customers worldwide and touching just about every industry, cloud-based customer relationship management isn’t sexy. Meanwhile in the AI world, CEOs like Amodei, Altman, Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are literally debating whose tech is going to kill us all first, if at all.

Despite that, Benioff looked like a king on Tuesday. He towered over Amodei, who spent the past week telling the entire world that humans were on track to go extinct in the near future. He boasted about Salesforce’s contributions to San Francisco, including millions to the city’s school district, hospitals and police. So far, he’s avoided controversy this year, a better start than in 2025 when he had to apologize for supporting sending the national guard to San Francisco to rein in crime.

Article continues below this ad

He also urged more of his tech “brethren” to be just as philanthropic to the Bay Area as he has, noting that he extended his giving across the bay to Oakland because we couldn’t “have a great San Francisco without a great Oakland.” At a private media event following the keynote, he took extra time to answer questions from a diverse media scrum, even showing off a little Japanese.

But there was a small moment at the keynote, so easy to miss, that was telling of Benioff’s place in the tech industry. It started when Huang was on the microphone. The Nvidia chief turned over his shoulder and told Benioff “just follow me.” The crowd laughed, and Benioff responded, “You’ve got this. Jensen, we’re all following you, bro.”

Just as he said that, he put two hands on Huang’s shoulders to steer him. In a split second, Huang shook off Benioff and stepped ahead of him, just before he hesitated and put his arm around his back. It was a strange sequence — a sort of tug-of-war of showing who’s in charge — at center stage. Huang took control of the room, Benioff tried to rein him in, and the two met in the middle, continuing their walk around the room side by side. Again, small enough to miss, but big enough that it came up in conversation at a Dreamforce after-party later that night.

Article continues below this ad

By no means was Benioff knocked off his throne. After all, it was only five seconds out of three full days of what is essentially the tech world’s homecoming week. Not to mention Benioff has been on top for years. His name is on UCSF’s children’s hospital in Oakland, his Salesforce Tower defines the city skyline, and the park atop the Salesforce Transit Center is one of downtown’s more pleasant spots. His company is doing well amid fears that it’s over for software. But for just a moment, somebody else became the star at Benioff’s own show.

Dreamforce is the biggest stage possible for the company, and Benioff himself, to show it’s still a big player as AI takes over. Perhaps it’s inevitable that eventually software is phased out, just as any tech has to evolve.

But until that happens, and while Benioff still has his crown, can he try to steer his colleagues, or will he get shrugged off? That remains to be seen.

Article continues below this ad

Attending Dreamforce and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Matthew Brown securely at matthew.brown@sfgate.com or matthewbrownsfgate.11 on Signal.