Salesforce reportedly working on plans for an NFT cloud service

Salesforce.com Inc. is reportedly working on plans to release a cloud service for non-fungible tokens.

CNBC, referencing people familiar with the matter, reports that Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor both discussed the strategy at an online employee event. Should it come to fruition, the service would allow artists to create content and then release it on a marketplace like OpenSea.

The report claims that Salesforce could also potentially integrate the tool into its own ecosystem where transactions could be managed, negating the need to use a service such as OpenSea.

NFTs are a digital asset that uses blockchain technology to represent the ownership of a digital item such as artwork, video or in-game item. NFT owners can prove that they “own” the digital item because they have the cryptographic token associated with the artwork. The keys to exchange that token are stored in a wallet.

Salesforce has not commented on the report, but NFT’s have been discussed by senior Salesforce employees in the past. Mathew Sweezey, director of market strategy at Salesforce, wrote in a blog post in December that in 2022 “pioneering brands will search for utility via NFTs.” He also referenced the release of NFTs by Time USA LLC as being a great example of both a collectible and a utility.

The reference to Time is pertinent – Marc Benioff owns Time Magazine. If Time, under Benioff’s ownership, has embraced NFT’s, it would suggest that it’s likely that Salesforce, under Benioff’s co-leadership, could as well.

The increasing popularity of NFT’s would be another driving factor in Salesforce looking to enter the market. According to Bloomberg, the NFT market surpassed $40 billion in 2021 and is predicted to have a compound annual growth rate of 185% through 2026. Suffice to say, there’s big money on the table and it’s a market Salesforce could profit from.

The interest in NFT’s is also reflected in the rise of companies such as OpenSea. Having be founded in 2017, OpenSea has a $13.3 billion valuation as of a $300 million funding round in January.

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