Marc Benioff says Salesforce's investment in Anthropic was a plan B that could pay off in ‘tens of billions’

Marc Benioff said that OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft prevented Salesforce from investing.

Bloomberg/Getty Images Marc Benioff said that OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft prevented Salesforce from investing.

Salesforce backed Anthropic and other AI startups instead.

Marc Benioff said Salesforce could make "tens of billions" from Anthropic.

Not being able to invest in OpenAI may have worked out perfectly for Salesforce.

On an episode of the Sources Podcast published Tuesday, Marc Benioff told host Alex Heath that he originally wanted Salesforce to invest in OpenAI.

Instead, the company backed its rival Anthropic , a decision the Salesforce CEO now thinks could be worth a fortune.

"I knew Sam Altman very well," Benioff said.

"I was like, 'Hey, I'd really like to be investing now in the company.' And he's like, unfortunately, because of the Microsoft relationship , we were not allowed to invest in OpenAI." Microsoft, an enterprise software competitor to Salesforce, holds roughly 27% of OpenAI, has rights to use OpenAI technology in its products, and sells access to OpenAI models through Azure.

Benioff said the situation changed Salesforce's approach.

"We felt like, whoa, we can't go here, we're going to have to go everywhere else," Benioff added, saying it was "not because we were so smart" and spotted an overlooked winner.

Benioff believes the bet could pay off handsomely and said that the investment has become a close business partnership.

Salesforce's Slackbot and other new interfaces are powered by Claude, Anthropic's AI model.

"It's because we have been pushed so close with Anthropic," Benioff said.