Salesforce built its public identity around one word it prints on its own values page: "Equality." For most of the past decade the company and its founder backed that word with action, threatening to pull investment out of Indiana over a 2015 religious freedom law and offering in 2021 to move employees out of Texas after the state banned most abortions. Then the same founder, Marc Benioff, who co-owns Time magazine with his wife, Lynne, congratulated Donald Trump as Time's 2024 Person of the Year and by late 2025 was telling reporters he "fully" supported the president and wanted the National Guard sent into his own home city of San Francisco.
Quick Take: For more than a decade, people who work at Salesforce have sent the large majority of their federal political dollars to Democrats, about 92.9 percent of it in the 2024 cycle and 95.4 percent in the 2020 cycle. The company itself has repeatedly stepped into national culture fights, opposing a 2015 Indiana religious freedom law and offering in 2021 to relocate employees affected by Texas' abortion ban, and it lists equality among its official values. Founder and chief executive Marc Benioff was once a major Democratic donor who swore off political giving around 2020; since late 2024 he has publicly praised President Trump, and by October 2025 he said he "fully" supported him.
- Its Democratic-donor founder backed Trump and called for the National Guard, then apologized.
- Employee federal donations run about 93 percent to Democrats, and have for over a decade.
- Prints "Equality" as a core value; fought Indiana's religious-freedom law and Georgia's voting law.
- Runs no corporate PAC; its political money is almost entirely individual employee giving.
- In 2026 the U.S. Army awarded it a defense contract with a $5.6 billion ceiling.
Where the Political Money Comes From
Salesforce's federal political footprint runs almost entirely through its employees, not a corporate checkbook. In the 2024 election cycle, contributions tied to the company and its people totaled about $1.39 million, and of the money that went to one of the two major parties, roughly 92.9 percent went to Democrats.[1] That tilt is long standing. In the 2020 cycle, affiliated giving reached about $3.09 million, around 95.4 percent of it to Democrats, and in the 2016 cycle about $938,000, close to 89.6 percent to Democrats.[1]
Almost all of that money came from individual employees, not a company PAC. In the 2024 cycle, individuals listing Salesforce as their employer gave about $1.2 million, while the corporate Salesforce.com PAC reported nothing in contributions to candidates and parties; that PAC gave $76,000 in the 2022 cycle and $66,500 in the 2020 cycle.[1] (OpenSecrets groups these contribution figures into two year cycles, so its "2024" figure spans January 2023 through December 2024.)
The Lobbying Footprint
Lobbying is tracked by calendar year and is a separate measure from campaign contributions. Salesforce spent about $3.07 million lobbying the federal government in 2024 and about $3.28 million in 2023.[2] Its 2024 disclosures point at issues that are more regulatory than partisan: a federal data privacy bill (the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024), a cluster of artificial intelligence governance bills, and routine tax and appropriations measures.[2] The company reported no outside election spending in the 2024 cycle.[1]
A Company That Picks Sides on Social Issues
Salesforce names equality as one of its core values, and for years it turned that language into public political action.[3] In 2015, Benioff said the company was being "forced to dramatically reduce our investment" in Indiana after the state passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that critics feared would let businesses deny service to LGBTQ customers.[4] In September 2021, after Texas' six week abortion ban took effect, Salesforce told employees it would help relocate any worker and their family worried about reproductive health access, without stating a position on the law itself, and Benioff posted the news publicly: "Ohana if you want to move we'll help you exit TX."[5][6] The company also co created Pledge 1%, a model under which it commits 1 percent of its equity, product, and employee time to charitable causes.[7] Salesforce also says it has a proud history of standing up for LGBTQ rights and supports the federal Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.[8] On the environment, it has carried those positions into federal policy, publicly backing the Paris Agreement, the U.S. target of cutting emissions 50 to 52 percent by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050, and the climate provisions of the 2021 budget reconciliation package.[9]
Voting Rights, Police Reform, and Criminal Justice
Salesforce has used its own public-policy operation to take documented positions on voting and criminal-justice legislation. The company says it was the first major company to oppose Georgia's SB 202 voting law in 2021, and it opposed voting restrictions in Texas while backing bills in Washington and Massachusetts that would restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people and expand absentee voting.[10] It donated $1.5 million to nonpartisan voting-access organizations and says it supported more than 20 criminal-justice and police-reform bills across several states, covering measures such as chokehold bans, data-transparency and accountability provisions, and reductions in fines and fees for people leaving incarceration.[10] Salesforce describes this advocacy as nonpartisan.
Benioff, Time Magazine, and a Turn Toward Trump
Marc Benioff co founded Salesforce in 1999 and runs it today as chair and chief executive, and he has been its political face for most of that time. Personally, he spent years as a major Democratic aligned donor. In 2018 he was the most vocal backer of San Francisco's Proposition C, committing more than $7 million in personal and corporate money to a ballot measure that taxed the city's largest companies to fund homelessness services, and he feuded publicly on social media with Twitter and Square chief Jack Dorsey over it.[11] That same year, Benioff and his wife, Lynne, personally bought Time magazine for $190 million, a purchase they described as separate from Salesforce.[12] Around 2020, he said he had stopped making political donations to protect the magazine's neutrality.[13]
His public stance shifted heading into Trump's second term. In December 2024, after Time named Trump its Person of the Year, Benioff congratulated the president elect and wrote that it marked "a time of great promise for our nation."[14] He said he would support whoever won the election and that fiscal discipline should be a bipartisan goal, while adding that he would not give to Trump's inaugural fund.[15] At the January 2025 World Economic Forum, he said a change of administration would not change Salesforce's core values, naming equality and sustainability.[3] In October 2025, he had gone further, telling reporters he "fully" supported the president and calling for the National Guard to be deployed to San Francisco to address crime, a reversal widely noted against his long record of funding liberal causes.[3][16] On October 17, he reversed course and apologized, saying that after the largest and safest Dreamforce in the company's history he no longer believed the National Guard was needed and that his earlier comment "came from an abundance of caution around the event."[17]
What Salesforce Sells
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) is the world's largest customer relationship management platform, selling cloud based sales, service, marketing, and analytics software to businesses rather than consumers. It has grown through large acquisitions, including ExactTarget (2013), Tableau (2019), Slack (2021), and Informatica (2025), and has moved recently into AI "agents" under a product line it calls Agentforce, which Salesforce said reached about $800 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of fiscal 2026.[18] In January 2026, the U.S. Army awarded Salesforce, through a wholly owned national-security subsidiary, a 10-year contract with a ceiling of $5.6 billion to modernize the Army's systems, a maximum rather than a guaranteed amount.[19] For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2026, Salesforce reported $41.5 billion in revenue; a year earlier it reported $37.9 billion in revenue and about $6.2 billion in net income.[18][20] The company is based in San Francisco and employs 83,334 people worldwide as of January 31, 2026.[21]
Where to Find Them
Salesforce sells primarily to businesses through its website, salesforce.com, and a direct sales team, with major U.S. offices in San Francisco, Indianapolis, and Dallas, among others.
Footnotes
[1] OpenSecrets, "Salesforce.Com: Totals," accessed August 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/salesforce-com/totals?id=D000037335
[2] OpenSecrets, "Salesforce.Com: Lobbying," accessed August 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/salesforce-com/lobbying?id=D000037335
[3] Kelvin Chan, Associated Press (via The Detroit News), "How a tech billionaire philanthropist got caught between Trump and San Francisco," November 16, 2025. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2025/11/16/salesforce-tech-billionaire-philanthropist-marc-benioff-donald-trump-san-francisco-national-guard/87310605007/
[4] Indianapolis Business Journal, "Salesforce CEO joins late effort to stop 'religious freedom' bill," March 25, 2015. https://www.ibj.com/articles/52415-salesforce-ceo-joins-late-effort-to-stop-religious-freedom-bill
[5] Annie Palmer, CNBC, "Salesforce offers to relocate employees and their families after Texas abortion law goes into effect," September 10, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/salesforce-offers-to-relocate-employees-from-texas-after-abortion-bill.html
[6] NBC News, "Salesforce offers to help employees leave in wake of Texas' restrictive abortion law," September 2021. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/salesforce-offers-help-employees-leave-wake-texas-restrictive-abortion-law-n1278988
[7] Pledge 1%, "About Us," accessed August 2026. https://www.pledge1percent.org/about-us/
[8] Salesforce, "Out at Work: Salesforce Employees Celebrate Pride Month," 2021. https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/out-at-work-salesforce-employees-celebrate-pride-month/
[9] Salesforce, "Salesforce Supports Climate Investments Outlined in U.S. Budget Reconciliation Package," 2021. https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-supports-climate-investments-outlined-in-u-s-budget-reconciliation-package/
[10] Salesforce, "Salesforce Pushes for Voting Rights, Police Reform and Criminal Justice Reform; Donates $1.5M for Voting Access," January 2022. https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-pushes-for-voting-rights-police-reform-and-criminal-justice-reform-donates-1-5m-for-voting-access/
[11] NBC News, "Tech billionaires spar over San Francisco tax for homeless," November 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tech-billionaires-spar-over-san-francisco-tax-homeless-n932016
[12] Reuters (via Malay Mail), "Salesforce boss Marc Benioff, wife buy Time magazine," September 17, 2018. https://www.malaymail.com/news/money---international/2018/09/17/salesforce-boss-marc-benioff-wife-buy-time-magazine/1673346
[13] The San Francisco Standard, "As Marc Benioff warms to Trump, Time staffers cool to their owner," January 6, 2025. https://sfstandard.com/2025/01/06/as-marc-benioff-warms-to-trump-time-staffers-cool-to-their-owner/
[14] Variety (via AOL), "Time Magazine Owner Says Trump's Presidency Marks a Time of Great Promise for America," December 2024. https://www.aol.com/entertainment/time-magazine-owner-says-trump-213309568.html
[15] Fox Business, "Salesforce CEO defends supporting Trump: We are turning the page," December 10, 2024. https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/salesforce-ceo-defends-supporting-trump-we-turning-page
[16] Anders Hagstrom, Fox News, "Marc Benioff urges Trump to deploy National Guard in San Francisco after donating millions to liberal causes," October 12, 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/marc-benioff-urges-trump-deploy-national-guard-san-francisco-after-donating-millions-liberal-causes
[17] CNN Business, "Marc Benioff apologizes for suggesting National Guard be sent to San Francisco," October 17, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/17/business/salesforce-marc-benioff-apology
[18] Salesforce, "Salesforce Delivers Record Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2026 Results," February 2026. https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Salesforce-Delivers-Record-Fourth-Quarter-Fiscal-2026-Results/default.aspx
[19] Salesforce, "U.S. Army Awards Salesforce $5.6B Contract to Accelerate Military Modernization and Department of War Readiness," Business Wire, January 26, 2026. https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/U-S--Army-Awards-Salesforce-5-6B-Contract-to-Accelerate-Military-Modernization-and-Department-of-War-Readiness/default.aspx
[20] Salesforce, "Salesforce Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results," February 26, 2025. https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2025/02/26/fy25-q4-earnings/
[21] Salesforce, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, Human Capital Management, filed with the SEC. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1108524/000110852426000060/crm-20260131.htm
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