Salesforce has promoted Bret Taylor to co-CEO and vice chair of its board, the company announced Tuesday.
Taylor will work alongside Marc Benioff, the company’s current CEO, chairman and co-founder. Before his promotion, Taylor served as president and COO of the company for two years. He joined Salesforce in 2016 when Quip, a software startup he founded alongside Kevin Gibbs, was acquired by Salesforce. Taylor quickly rose to power in the company, serving as its chief product officer between 2017 and 2019 before becoming COO.
Twitter named Taylor, already a member of the company's board of directors, as its chairman Monday, in conjunction with the departure of co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO. Taylor has long been a figure in the social media world, having co-founded FriendFeed, a social feed aggregator bought by Facebook in 2009. He worked for several years at Facebook, quickly being named its CTO and a key adviser to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“We’re in a new world and Salesforce has never been more relevant or strategic for our customers,” Benioff said in a statement. “Together, Bret and I will lead Salesforce through our next chapter, while living our shared values of trust, customer success, innovation and equality for all.”
The appointment is the second time in three years that the cloud software giant has had two leaders. In 2018, Keith Block began his short-lived tenure as co-CEO. He left the position in February 2020, shocking industry watchers who expected him to succeed Benioff if he decided to retire. Block remained an adviser for the company until February 2021.