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All-In · 2 min · May 15, 2026

Salesforce serves China through an exclusive Alibaba partnership

Marc Benioff says Salesforce has no China offices or employees and operates there through an exclusive Alibaba partnership. Data residency keeps customer data in China, a setup he says is unique to that market.

Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff is CEO of Salesforce.

Founded Salesforce in 1999, pioneering cloud computing and building one of the world's leading enterprise software companies.

  • Chamath Palihapitiya, Host · Founder & CEO, Social Capital

    Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.

  • Jason Calacanis, Host · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH

    Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.

  • David Sacks, Host · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures

    PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.

  • David Friedberg, Host · CEO, Ohalo

    Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.

About this segment

Marc Benioff says Salesforce has no China offices or employees and operates there through an exclusive Alibaba partnership. Data residency keeps customer data in China, a setup he says is unique to that market.

From “Trump-Xi Summit, Benioff: "Not My First SaaSpocalypse," OpenAI vs Apple, Multi-Sensory AI, El Niño”, May 15, 2026. Watch the full episode

“we don't have any offices or employees in China. We never have.”
Marc Benioffat 10:02 · All-In10:02

Takeaways

  1. Salesforce has no direct offices or employees in China.
  2. An exclusive Alibaba partnership handles its China offering.
  3. Customer data stays in China under local residency rules.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 35:49Trusted enterprise software may hold up as AI reshapes SaaSPro pick 5:49
  2. 56:52AI assistants may shift from prompts to continuous sensory context5:11
  3. 1:02:58A strong El Niño could threaten crops and raise food prices6:33
  4. 44:43Agents let Salesforce reach people its sales team never called back2:46
  5. 20:03Benioff says China can build competitive models without top-end chips3:45

  6. 9:37Salesforce serves China through an exclusive Alibaba partnership2:25

  7. 52:37Google could turn personal data into an AI assistant advantage3:37Up next

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 9:42

    Don't forget, this isn't Trump's and she's first meeting. These guys really like each other. They are very connected together. You can see they're smiling with each other. They're very, they have a sales orientation. So I expect a lot of order books to come back. I have a question for you. Are you allowed to sell software in China? We, well, with the right, the Chinese have a lot of data residency laws.

  2. 10:05

    So, you know, we do it as, we don't have any offices or employees in China. We never have. The only time we end up with any residue in China is when we buy a company and they have a presence over there. And then we have to divest from it. we have an exclusive partnership with Alibaba. Everything just goes through them. And we don't do anything in China. Is it significant, growing? What percentage of your revenue is it?

  3. 10:30

    Yeah, it's great. We have a great partnership. Key customers of Salesforce, like Louis Vuitton, or Laura Piana. I know Chamath loves Laura Piana. And Laura Piana sells a lot of sweaters in China. And then, you know, in all the other stores all over the world, they use Salesforce. But in China, it's Salesforce on Alibaba. It's still your code, but then it resides in their servers for data residency stuff.

  4. 10:57

    Their data residency, their partnership. It's a totally unique relationship. It's the only place in the world that we do such a thing. Yeah, and it has to be, all the data has to be kept in China. All the data has to be accessible by the CCP. That's why it's so extraordinary, by the way, what Elon has. You know, Elon has Tesla and China, no partnership. He's the only one. He has a phenomenal relationship with Xi.

  5. 11:22

    When you look at Xi and Elon together, notice how deferential and respectful they are of each other. And here is these AI cars with all these cameras, American-made, you know, Chinese factories driving around China. Yeah, that is pretty incredible. How do you think he pulled that off? Is that just a one-off exception? I think Elon's the greatest salesman in the world. That's how. I mean, the cynical take on it, Chamath, would be they wanted him there and they wanted to study the company and the innovation.

  6. 11:56

    And they have now become the biggest competitor with their...