In a stunning development that signals a potential power shift in the artificial intelligence landscape, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has announced he is permanently abandoning ChatGPT in favor of Google's newly launched Gemini 3.0 model. The declaration comes after just two hours of testing Google's latest AI offering, marking a significant endorsement from one of tech's most influential leaders.
The Two-Hour Conversion
Benioff, who had been a daily ChatGPT user for three consecutive years, expressed his dramatic conversion in a social media post that sent ripples through the tech community. The Salesforce chief described his experience with Gemini 3.0 as nothing short of revolutionary, citing substantial improvements across multiple performance metrics that convinced him to make the permanent switch.
"Holy shit. I've used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I'm not going back. The leap is insane — reasoning, speed, images, video… everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again," Benioff wrote in his enthusiastic endorsement on platform X.
Industry Leaders Acknowledge Gemini's Breakthrough
The significance of Benioff's endorsement is amplified by the immediate recognition from other tech titans. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had previously positioned Gemini 3 as the company's "most intelligent model", boasting its comprehensive capabilities that enable users to "bring any idea to life."
Even more telling was the reaction from OpenAI's leadership and competitors. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly congratulated Google on their achievement, posting "Congrats to Google on Gemini 3! Looks like a great model" despite the competitive implications for his own company.
Elon Musk, whose xAI company develops the Grok chatbot, also joined the chorus of praise. The Tesla CEO offered congratulations to both Sundar Pichai and DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, signaling broad industry recognition of Google's technological advancement.
Competitive Pressure Mounts on OpenAI
Benioff's switch highlights the intensifying competition in the AI chatbot space, where Google has been playing catch-up to OpenAI's early dominance. The enthusiastic reception of Gemini 3.0 suggests Google may have closed the gap significantly, potentially altering the competitive dynamics of the entire industry.
Internal communications from Altman acknowledge the competitive challenge, with the OpenAI chief noting "temporary economic headwinds" in a company memo. However, he expressed confidence in OpenAI's ability to weather the competition, emphasizing that "having most of our research team focused on really getting to superintelligence is critically important."
The rapid adoption and praise for Gemini 3.0's multimodal capabilities—particularly in reasoning, speed, image quality, and video processing—suggest that Google has made substantial technical progress that even competitors are forced to acknowledge.
This development marks a potential turning point in the AI wars, as major enterprise customers and tech leaders begin reevaluating their AI tool preferences based on performance breakthroughs rather than first-mover advantage.
