A brief social media exchange between Elon Musk and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has drawn attention after comments made during Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce’s flagship AI conference.
During the 3-day Dreamforce 2025 event, Benioff spoke extensively about the rise of the “agentic enterprise,” where artificial intelligence plays a larger role in business operations for companies of all sizes.
At the conference, Benioff also shared an incident involving OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. According to a video from the event posted on social media by a popular X user, Benioff explained that ChatGPT refused to edit a photo of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
The requested edit reportedly involved removing branded conference necklaces, but ChatGPT declined the request due to copyright concerns related to conference badges.
Benioff then turned to Grok, the AI chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, to generate a viral image of himself alongside an AI-rendered version of Sam Altman.
After the video circulated online, Elon Musk responded to the post with a simple two-word comment: “Haha cool.”
The reply quickly gained traction on X, receiving more than 90,000 likes and over 3,000 replies.
The exchange gained additional attention because Benioff had previously been one of the most vocal supporters of ChatGPT.
In October 2025, Salesforce announced an expanded partnership with OpenAI, integrating its Agentforce 360 platform with ChatGPT and enabling enterprises to use GPT-5 models within Salesforce products.
At the time, Benioff praised the collaboration.
“As consumers, we already get instant recommendations or insights from ChatGPT.”
“Now enterprises can deliver that same intelligence and immediacy,” he said.
However, the relationship appeared to shift shortly after. In November 2025, Benioff publicly said he was moving away from ChatGPT after testing Google’s Gemini 3 AI model.
“Holy s—. I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back,” Benioff wrote on X.
“The leap is insane — reasoning, speed, images, video… everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again.”
Dreamforce 2025 also made headlines for another reason involving Benioff. During the event, he apologised for earlier comments suggesting that President Donald Trump should send the US National Guard into San Francisco to address safety concerns.
Benioff later clarified his stance, saying he had reconsidered his comments after discussions with local leaders.
“I’ve listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials … I do not believe the national guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco.”
He added that his earlier remarks were influenced by security considerations for the Dreamforce event.
Benioff remains a major figure in the city’s business landscape, with Salesforce being the largest private employer in San Francisco.
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