Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Mark, thank you as always for joining us. You are
Speaker 2: at a big groundbreaking ceremony today at Strab Benioff Medical
Speaker 2: Center in Honolulu. This is just one of many hospitals
Speaker 2: that you've now contributed to in Hawaii. And if I
Speaker 2: got my math right, this gift means you have given
Speaker 2: now four hundred and fifty million dollars to healthcare in
Speaker 2: both Hawaii and San Francisco. Talk to us about the
Speaker 2: thrust of these hospital gifts. What are you really trying
Speaker 2: to achieve here and how does it fit into your
Speaker 2: broader philosophy.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm so grateful to be here with you today, Emily,
Speaker 1: and it's wonderful to be here in Oahu. I think
Speaker 1: this is your home town. Is that right?
Speaker 2: It is? Yes, indeed it is.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you we're doing something exciting here. We're
Speaker 1: breaking ground at a new hospital, which is the Straw
Speaker 1: Benioff Hospital here, and we just broke ground two weeks
Speaker 1: ago at the new Helo Medical Center. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you it's great to be doing philanthropy and Hawaii. We've
Speaker 1: done it for so many years in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: as you know, We've built two amazing children's hospitals in
Speaker 1: San Francisco and Oakland, and now we're bringing that great
Speaker 1: expertise here to Hawaii as well. It's really an incredible
Speaker 1: trinity that we've created between Heilo Oahu and also UCSF
Speaker 1: and bringing it together. Well, this is going to improve
Speaker 1: the health of the Hawaiians. That's what we're all about.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about the connection between the hospitals in
Speaker 2: Hawaii and San Francisco, because I understand now there's an
Speaker 2: ability to share care and share information, you know, and
Speaker 2: improve the quality of care that folks get in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Well, Emily, as you know very well as a native Hawaiian,
Speaker 1: that when you're here in Hawaii, especially if you're in
Speaker 1: a neighbor island, you're living in paradise, but you also
Speaker 1: realize you might have made a trade that you may
Speaker 1: not have the same level of healthcare as you might have,
Speaker 1: for example, where you are right now in San Francisco. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we want the best of both worlds. We
Speaker 1: want the idea that you can have great healthcare here
Speaker 1: in Hawaii and also live in paradise. And the way
Speaker 1: that we're doing that is not only creating state of
Speaker 1: the art medical facilities and recruiting world class physicians here
Speaker 1: to Hawaii, but linking UCSF and also these Hawaiian hospitals together,
Speaker 1: and that's absolutely critical because look, we're going to be
Speaker 1: able to do great things here, but there will be limits,
Speaker 1: of course to what we can do in Hawaii, which
Speaker 1: is why the integration with UCSF, which is of course
Speaker 1: the University of California, San Francisco, probably the premier medical
Speaker 1: center in the United States, is now part of Hawaiian Healthcare.
Speaker 2: You've talked for many years about the requirement really responsibility
Speaker 2: to give back when you can, and you've talked a
Speaker 2: lot about folks not giving enough in the San Francisco community.
Speaker 2: You know, in Hawaii, you've made a number of property purchases,
Speaker 2: have a number of tech billionaires like Larry Ellison who
Speaker 2: now owns almost all of Leni, and Mark Zuckerberg on
Speaker 2: Kawhi and Jeff Bezos on Maui. Are all of those
Speaker 2: people giving enough, doing enough to give back to their communities.
Speaker 1: Well, different people who live here like to do different things.
Speaker 1: Some people told me that I like to buy a
Speaker 1: lot of land here. That's preposterous. I have not done
Speaker 1: that I don't own hundreds of acres. I did buy
Speaker 1: hundreds of acres for an affordable housing agency in Heilo,
Speaker 1: So that is some land that went to help Hawaiians
Speaker 1: get homes. But I'm very happy just having my own
Speaker 1: personal residence here. But what I really enjoy is giving back.
Speaker 1: And I think you know that in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: not just through Salesforce that's given back hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in the Bay Area, including being the largest
Speaker 1: provider to the local San Francisco Oakland public schools, but
Speaker 1: also to the hospitals. And this is so important to
Speaker 1: so we can give to our local public hospitals, our
Speaker 1: local public schools, even our local public parks. I think
Speaker 1: all of us can do so much more to give back.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's probably the most fun I've had
Speaker 1: as the CEO of Salesforce. I mean, it's been an
Speaker 1: amazing journey becoming the third largest software company in the world.
Speaker 1: I think, you know we're going to you know, we
Speaker 1: said we're going to do about thirty eight billion dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue this year. Well that's been an amazing journey.
Speaker 1: But the fun part has been giving back and that's
Speaker 1: why I continue to do it and why we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to do a lot more of it in
Speaker 1: the future as well.
Speaker 2: Well. Since you mentioned it, and you've now been back
Speaker 2: quote unquote as sole CEO of Salesforce for the last
Speaker 2: eighteen months, weathered activist investors, you know, talk to us
Speaker 2: a little bit about the learnings in terms of taking
Speaker 2: the rains, retaking the reins in the age of AI.
Speaker 1: I think I might be one of the few CEOs
Speaker 1: that actually really enjoyed working with these activist investors. I
Speaker 1: had never heard so many great new ideas in my career,
Speaker 1: including such out of the box thinking. And look, we
Speaker 1: were able to really transform and evolve Salesforce over the
Speaker 1: last year, and you can see it with our incredible
Speaker 1: financial results that we had last year and our idea
Speaker 1: that we're able to continue to move forward with these
Speaker 1: incredible new characteristics of our company and our last earnings result.
Speaker 1: We've even talked about that we've started to create a
Speaker 1: dividend that's something that was beyond my imagination even just
Speaker 1: a few years ago. So it's exciting to be the
Speaker 1: number one CRM to help companies connect with our customers
Speaker 1: in a whole new way. Right now, we're about to
Speaker 1: enter an incredible new world, which is the world of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence and how it's going to transform these customer relationships.
Speaker 1: And I think we're about to see some technology that
Speaker 1: we never thought we'd see in our lifetimes. We're going
Speaker 1: to see just some incredible new ways to run our businesses.
Speaker 2: Competition and CRM is fierce. Mark You've got Service now
Speaker 2: trying to poach a bunch of Salesforce employees. They stopped
Speaker 2: using Slack after you bought it. They're trying to build
Speaker 2: more of a consumer brand. They started their own trailblazer program.
Speaker 2: Are they trying to pick a fight with you?
Speaker 1: Well, they're an interesting company, you know. I just think
Speaker 1: they need to be careful. They might be getting a
Speaker 1: little ahead of their skis. We just replaced them at Disney.
Speaker 1: Of course, we already had run Disney stores and Disney
Speaker 1: Guides in the Park, and we had done a lot
Speaker 1: of things with Disney with their customer relationships. But I
Speaker 1: think everybody knows that when they went to have Disney
Speaker 1: Plus and wanted to have a call center and they
Speaker 1: chose that company, well, unfortunately, Salesforce had to come in
Speaker 1: and rescue the entire operation and rebuild all of the
Speaker 1: customer success and call centers for Disney, and which was
Speaker 1: at that point had been called out as a marquee
Speaker 1: customer of their as well. Salesforce is actually a tremendous
Speaker 1: company that does real customer success and delivers solutions in
Speaker 1: sales service marketing for so many great companies around the world. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously standardized the Disney, but for so many
Speaker 1: other great organizations, banks, insurance companies all over the world.
Speaker 1: And I think we're doing pretty well on our own.
Speaker 2: Alphabet and Hobspot. Google and Hobspots are in talks to merge.
Speaker 2: How significantly would that disrupt the CRM market?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't I haven't really heard too much about that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: these are both great companies and customers of ours, and
Speaker 1: so we work with them very closely, and it'd be
Speaker 1: very interesting to see what would happen. But I really
Speaker 1: can't understand it because I actually have only heard the
Speaker 1: rumors that you've heard.
Speaker 2: It's Bloomberg reporting. But we'll leave it there. Last question,
Speaker 2: I'd like love to ask you about TikTok if I may,
Speaker 2: because you've been such a vocal critic of social media
Speaker 2: and it's impact on children, it's impact on people. I'm
Speaker 2: curious what you think of the TikTok divestment law and
Speaker 2: if Salesforce would be at all interested in joining a
Speaker 2: coalition of companies interested in buying TikTok.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not really a consumer company. We drive a
Speaker 1: lot of these consumer companies, so many of them are
Speaker 1: our customers. I know that, you know that's been an
Speaker 1: amazing journey. But I think that when it comes to
Speaker 1: social media, and I've said this before, we have to
Speaker 1: look very seriously at how it's being managed and how
Speaker 1: it's being regulated. There's certain US regulations that kind of
Speaker 1: give these social media companies a free ride even if
Speaker 1: their platforms are misused. I think that needs to be
Speaker 1: directly addressed. I've talked about that, I think with you
Speaker 1: several times. And look, this is a serious world. And
Speaker 1: you talked about AI. AI is going to be able
Speaker 1: to create a lot of misinformation, and if we don't
Speaker 1: have a good understanding of how that's being used with
Speaker 1: social media, we could end up in this place that
Speaker 1: we don't want to be. You know, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: proponent of free speech, but I am not a huge
Speaker 1: proponent of all speech. You know, I don't think that
Speaker 1: the ideas that hate speech or misinformation should really not
Speaker 1: be tolerated in some of these platforms. It's not trust,
Speaker 1: it's not tolerated at Bloomberg, it's not tolerated at Time
Speaker 1: or other media organizations. It shouldn't be tolerated on these
Speaker 1: social media networks as well.
Speaker 2: All right, Mark Benioff in Honolulu, I'll let you get
Speaker 2: back to that groundbreaking ceremony. The CEO of Salesforce Mark,
Speaker 2: as always, thank you so much for joining us,