Salesforce says Keith Block has stepped down as co-CEO but will still advise Marc Benioff; Gavin Patterson named President and CEO of Salesforce International
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) today announced that Keith Block has stepped down as co-CEO of Salesforce and Marc Benioff is Chair and CEO of the company.
Context & Ripple Effects
Keith Block's exit closes a four-year arc inside Salesforce: he was given the COO title in 2016, then elevated to co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff in 2018 as the company's designated number two. With this announcement he returns to an advisory role under Benioff, and Gavin Patterson takes over a newly framed Salesforce International.
The move also fits a pattern the later coverage makes explicit: Bret Taylor, Block's successor in the co-CEO seat, would himself step down as vice chair and co-CEO at the end of 2023, again leaving Benioff as chair and sole CEO. Read together, the two departures suggest the co-CEO title at Salesforce functions less as shared control than as a rotating apprenticeship.
First-order effects
- Marc Benioff regains sole command of Salesforce as chair and CEO, ending the dual-leadership structure created in 2018, while Keith Block shifts to advising him rather than running operations.
- Gavin Patterson becomes President and CEO of Salesforce International, giving the company's non-US business a dedicated executive line reporting into Benioff's structure.
Second-order effects
- With Block gone, the internal succession question reopens: whoever is positioned next — as Taylor later was — inherits a title that has now twice ended with the deputy departing and Benioff remaining.
- Salesforce International under Patterson becomes the proving ground for the next generation of leadership, concentrating international go-to-market decisions in one office rather than splitting them between two CEOs.
Third-order effects
- If the Block and Taylor exits mark a durable pattern, Salesforce's governance settles around founder-centric control, with co-CEO appointments serving as extended auditions that revert to Benioff rather than genuine power-sharing.
- For other founder-led enterprise software companies watching Salesforce, the lesson is that co-CEO structures are hard to sustain against a dominant founder — pushing succession planning toward regional or functional presidencies instead.
The trend: Founder-led software companies keep experimenting with co-CEO structures as succession vehicles, but the seat keeps reverting to the founder — Salesforce has now run that cycle twice.