Report: Benioff in talks to sell Time; Salesforce CEO has called media ‘much harder’ than tech

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is in talks to sell Time to Greek media company Antenna Group, CNBC reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

A Time spokesperson said there is no deal in place to sell the company, which Benioff acquired in 2018 for $190 million. One of CNBC’s sources said a sale price now would be closer to $150 million.

Benioff was a recent guest on the GeekWire Podcast, for a wide ranging conversation about artificial intelligence, Microsoft, Seattle tech, and more. He told GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop that being in the media industry is very different than the tech industry.

“It’s much harder,” Benioff said. “The media industry is very difficult. It’s very complicated. The tech industry, software, I’ve been doing for 45 years, it’s much easier.”

Asked by Bishop what the toughest thing about media is, Benioff cited “the fluidity of the models.”

“I think that with Time, what we’ve done is, we have the print … We also have the digital. We have events. We have other kinds of digital products. Even our NFTs, if you remember those. We have our Time Studios. We have a movie studio now. We have many different types of products inside Time,” he said. “And that idea that we’re constantly building and growing and expanding brands, sub-brands, new products, it’s so fluid and so fast moving. I would say that in some ways it’s even more so than the tech industry.”