Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999 with $250,000 in seed money and built it into the world's largest customer relationship management software company, with annual revenue exceeding $35 billion and a market capitalization in the hundreds of billions. Born September 25, 1964, in San Francisco into a Jewish family, Benioff graduated from the University of Southern California in 1986 and worked at Oracle under Larry Ellison before striking out on his own to build what became the company that pioneered cloud-based enterprise software. He is known as one of the most outspoken CEOs in American business on social and political issues.

Benioff has been a consistent donor to Jewish and Israeli causes and has spoken publicly about his Jewish identity as connected to his civic values. Salesforce Israel — with offices in Tel Aviv and Herzliya — is one of the company's major R&D and product engineering centers, contributing to Salesforce's AI and CRM product development and employing hundreds of Israeli engineers. The company's deep operational presence in Israel creates institutional interests that reinforce Benioff's personal engagement. He has spoken at Israeli technology conferences and has been active in promoting Israel's innovation ecosystem to international business audiences.

Following October 7, Benioff was among the American Jewish tech leaders who expressed support for Israel's right to self-defense and concern about the rise of antisemitism in American institutions and online platforms. He has spoken at events focused on combating antisemitism and has maintained his public Jewish identity and pro-Israel stance in a tech industry environment where such positions carry social costs from progressive employee and customer constituencies. At Rank 63, Benioff represents the Jewish tech mogul whose company's Israeli operations, personal philanthropy, and public voice combine into a form of Israel engagement that operates at the intersection of Silicon Valley, global enterprise technology, and Jewish communal life.