Salesforce's billionaire CEO who once blasted Mike Pence urges investors to move on
Benioff famously went to war with Pence last year when the Indiana governor signed a law that would have potentially allowed business owners to refuse to serve people based on their religious beliefs. Benioff threatened to move Salesforce out of Indiana, where it's the largest tech employer, and eventually got Pence to change the law.
Even as recently as September, Benioff warned people not to vote for Pence, saying he could do "some very bad things to the people that we love."
But now that the election is over and Pence is slated to be vice president of the country, Benioff is taking a step back.
During Salesforce's earnings call on Thursday, Benioff said it's time to put the election in the past and move forward. He said:
"In my view, it's in the past, we're moving forward. We have a beginner's mind and we have a sense of optimism for future, and we're going to cultivate that optimism and we're going to manifest it into our business because that is how we operate here.
I have met with CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world this week, and in each and every case, all of them are moving forward, OK? And we know what we have to do. We now need to execute."
It's understandable why Benioff wants to make nice with Pence. Salesforce is a $50 billion business that generates 75% of its revenue from the US, and there's no good for him to pick a fight with the second most powerful political figure in the world.
Benioff isn't the only CEO to take a much warmer stance on the Trump administration. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has congratulated the president-elect recently, while GE CEO Jeff Immelt is now saying he "looks forward to working with Trump," after calling his racist comments "unacceptable."