Journey into the heart of Dreamforce, where AI and A-list acts collide

If you’re not familiar with Dreamforce, it’s essentially Disneyland for CRM software enthusiasts. This year’s star-studded spectacle had about 40,000 attendees and included performances by heavyweights like Dave Matthews, Maggie Rogers, Demi Lovato, and The Foo Fighters. As for why a software company might pay millions for Dave Grohl to sell their products, well, I don’t know. I’m just happy for the free concert.

Upon my arrival, I couldn’t help but wonder why I had willingly embarked on a career that involved navigating through a sea of sweaty, Cotopaxi-clad tech bros. When the keynote event reached max capacity and the entrance was locked down, disgruntled attendees voiced their displeasure (some even arguing with security) about missing what was essentially a 2-hour long pitch on Salesforce’s new AI products.

One big difference this year compared to last year’s event is that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff no longer has a co-CEO, after Bret Taylor abruptly announced his resignation in November. In a press panel this week, I asked Benioff the burning question of his plans for succession, a move that earned me a scolding from one of the countless PR people present. In true Benioff style, he sidestepped the question entirely, offering a cryptic response about simply having the best time.

While the Taylor-sized hole was certainly felt on stage, Benioff wasn’t kidding about having a great time. Against the backdrop of a rocket ship-riding cartoon Einstein, zipping around giant screens to announce the new “Einstein Copilot” AI assistant, Benioff launched into a spiel about the exciting yet perilous landscape of artificial intelligence.

“These things are good but they’re not great, you know? They have a lot of answers that aren’t exactly true. We call them hallucinations. I call them lies,” Benioff said in his keynote. “These LLMs are very convincing liars. They really are, it’s amazing. And of course, they can turn very toxic very quickly.”

Benioff, along with the aforementioned chorus line of Salesforce PR folks, are on a fervent mission to ensure you’re acutely aware of their formidable presence in the AI arena. Benioff claimed in his keynote that Salesforce “is the No. 1 artificial intelligence platform used around the world,” someone on his team called this the “world’s largest AI event.” 

The pivot to AI came across as not just forced but completely over the top, though I suppose I shouldn’t have anticipated anything less from the company spending $10 million a year on employing Matthew McConaughey. When I expressed these thoughts to Anshu Sharma, a former Salesforce VP and now CEO of data privacy startup Skyflow, he explained that while Salesforce’s pivot to AI is certainly extravagant, it isn’t exactly illogical.

“If there’s been 10 great tech breakthroughs in the last 10 years, Salesforce has been on top of 12 of them,” Sharma told me. “Marc Benioff is a genius, and one thing I learned from him is that betting on a new thing has limited downside if you are wrong and unlimited upside if you are right about something like cloud, mobile, or now maybe AI.” 

Certainly, diving headfirst into the realm of AI is far from the worst bandwagon to hop onto, especially when you compare it to some past endeavors (like their Yammer clone, Chatter). This year, Salesforce fully committed to the bit, bringing onstage OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue. Also, Seth Meyers and Kristen Bell for some reason.

Amidst all the AI buzz, the most conspicuous departure from last year’s Dreamforce is the fact that this is Benioff’s first Dreamforce since laying off 10% of its staff following pressure from activist investors Elliott Management and Starboard Value, which were pushing for major cost-cutting. Salesforce also announced in January it aims to reduce its costs by as much as $3 billion to $5 billion by reducing its number of offices. 

When I spoke to my sources about how they feel about this year’s Dreamforce, one explained “the bitter taste” in their mouth that Salesforce would spend buckets of money to hire big acts “when they’re still banging the whole ‘year of efficiency’ BS on Slack.”

Indeed, thanks to the immense cuts mostly at the expense of employees, Salesforce’s “Ohana” culture has taken a beating in the past year. However, it’s abundantly clear that Benioff harbors a steadfast belief in his ability to emerge victorious in the ever-accelerating AI race. Despite the workforce cuts, Salesforce’s chat subsidiary, Slack, set its sights on rehiring former staff in June, all in pursuit of stoking the fires of its generative AI aspirations. And Benioff told Bloomberg that Salesforce plans to hire thousands, including many “boomerangs,” who previously worked at the company.

In the grand scheme of things, Dreamforce unfolded precisely as anticipated—a splendid spectacle of self-congratulation and opulence. My fingers are crossed that the AI boom outshines the other trends in Salesforce’s storied history, leaving the Chatter era in the shadows where it belongs.

Kylie Robison

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

NEWSWORTHY

Google location data settlement. Google is paying $93 million to settle a California state lawsuit about the ways the company tricked customers into making their location history available for targeted advertising, when all they thought they were doing was getting “enhanced” Maps. CNN reports that the settlement will also see Google be more transparent with Californians about location tracking, disclosing that it may be used for personalized ads.

TikTok megafine. Ireland's data protection authority has fined TikTok $386 million for violating children's privacy. As Politico reports, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fine comes in response to TikTok for years setting children's profiles to public by default, while not properly keeping an eye on rule-breaking sign-ups by under-13s.

X account verification. Paying X users can now use their government-issued IDs to verify their accounts—as long as they’re not in Europe. TechCrunch suggests this is because of the region’s strict data-protection laws; X’s partner, Israel’s Au10tix, apparently stores the data for up to 30 days.

ON OUR FEED

“There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive.”

—Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried reflects in a 15,000-word Twitter thread that he did not post, but rather sent to a social media influencer, who gave it to the New York Times, which described it as “hundreds of pages of sometimes rambling self-justifications, ranging from childhood memories to mathematical calculations.” Is it advisable for someone under house arrest to be writing and releasing such a document? Experts say no.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Oversubscribed Arm IPO rises 25% in first day of trading: ‘Every employee is now an owner,’ says CFO Jason Child, by Luisa Beltran

TikTok wants to become Amazon for Gen Z—but cheap products and concerns about customer data are foiling the plan, by Alexandra Sternlicht

Bolt CEO: ‘America’s FedNow service has much to learn from India’s breakthrough payments system’, by Maju Kuruvilla

Top AI institute chair and ex-Amazon exec thinks AI will disrupt employment as we know it—but it’ll make the world wealthier and more skilled, by Prarthana Prakash

Key legal and risk executives leaving Binance.US in wake of CEO stepping down, massive layoffs, by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

After announcing a new fee, video-game company Unity receives a death threat and is forced to close 2 offices ‘to ensure the safety of our employees’, by Bloomberg

BEFORE YOU GO

That iPhone 12 radiation thing. Apple is releasing a software update for iPhone 12 users in France, after the country’s radio-frequency regulator threatened a recall over alleged excessive radiation from the three-year-old handset. The French government seems happy with the move, Reuters reports.

However, Belgium is still going to investigate the radiation emissions of the iPhone 12—which Apple no longer sells directly—and other devices. Germany’s ears also pricked up when France announced its dissatisfaction with the device, but indicated it will follow France’s lead on the issue.