SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- A major San Francisco tech company has signed a multi-billion-dollar contract with the U.S. military. Salesforce, which is the largest private employer in SF, has signed a $5.6 billion, 10-year contract with the United States Army. In a news release on its website, the cloud software provider said the contract will allow the Army and the U.S. Department of Defense, which has been renamed the "Department of War" by the Trump administration, to "leverage Salesforce's trusted data fabric and compliant cloud technologies." The press release goes on to say that the contract will allow the military to "accelerate decision-making, optimize operations, and improve support for millions of warfighters, civilian personnel, industrial base partners, and dependents." Newsom to launch independent review into TikTok following sale to Trump-aligned group Through the deal, the Army will be able to leverage Salesforce's technology to "accelerate and optimize recruiting pipelines" and allow recruiters to "leverage out-of-the-box, mobile capabilities that make it easier to work in the field." The deal will enable Army recruiters to access Salesforce technology, including Slack messaging and artificial intelligence agents, that have become a core product in the company's pivot toward AI. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth prioritized acquiring more modern software platforms to "maximize lethality" in a DOD memo back in March of last year. The Wall Street Journal called the Salesforce deal "the latest example of the Pentagon turning to commercial software to speed up dated processes and technology." In an interview with the New York Times last year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called for President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco ahead of the company's annual Dreamforce conference. Benioff later apologized for those comments and reportedly made an 11th hour call to Trump, asking the president to stand down a planned "surge" of federal forces to the city. ...read more read less