Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Salesforce says it won’t buy Twitter, either

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: “It wasn’t the right fit for us.”

Annual Allen And Co. Investors Meeting Draws CEO’s And Business Leaders To Sun Valley, Idaho
Annual Allen And Co. Investors Meeting Draws CEO’s And Business Leaders To Sun Valley, Idaho
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Salesforce is not going to buy Twitter, CEO Marc Benioff told the Financial Times.

“In this case we’ve walked away. It wasn’t the right fit for us,” Benioff told the FT. “It’s not the right fit for us for many different reasons ... You’re going to look at price, you’re going to look at culture, you’re going to look at everything.”

Salesforce joins a growing list of companies that showed interest in acquiring Twitter over the past six weeks but have since bowed out. Google, Disney and Apple also took a look at Twitter and decided not to bid.

It’s not clear now if anyone wants to buy Twitter, which puts more pressure on the company to figure out what it really wants to be and how it’ll become profitable. Twitter is making a big push to become a live-video distributor, but that business is still new and unproven. Twitter needs time to revamp its business, which may be why people aren’t bidding.

It’s certainly possible a mystery bidder could materialize, but most believe Twitter is simply too expensive for any suitor to stomach. (That doesn’t include other issues, like the fact that Twitter still isn’t profitable and is no longer growing.)

Without anyone coming to Twitter’s rescue, expect the pressure on CEO Jack Dorsey to ratchet up. Twitter has lost 37 percent of its market value since Dorsey was formally appointed as CEO last October. And the fact that he is simultaneously running another public company, Square, will likely be a point of contention moving forward if Twitter doesn’t report solid earnings later this month.

Twitter stock was down as much as 7 percent on the news that Salesforce wasn’t bidding. Salesforce stock, on the other hand, was up 6 percent.

Update: A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Technology
The case for AI realismThe case for AI realism
Technology

AI isn’t going to be the end of the world — no matter what this documentary sometimes argues.

By Shayna Korol
Politics
OpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agendaOpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agenda
Politics

The AI company released a set of highly progressive policy ideas. There’s just one small problem.

By Eric Levitz
Future Perfect
Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.
Future Perfect

Protecting astronauts in space — and maybe even Mars — will help transform health on Earth.

By Shayna Korol
Podcasts
The importance of space toilets, explainedThe importance of space toilets, explained
Podcast
Podcasts

Houston, we have a plumbing problem.

By Peter Balonon-Rosen and Sean Rameswaram
Technology
What happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputerWhat happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputer
Technology

How they’re using AI at the lab that created the atom bomb.

By Joshua Keating
Future Perfect
Humanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious missionHumanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious mission
Future Perfect

Space barons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t seem religious. But their quest to colonize outer space is.

By Sigal Samuel