Bret Steven Taylor (born 1980) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is most notable for leading the team that co-createdGoogle Maps and his tenures as the CTO of Facebook (nowMeta Platforms), as the chairman ofTwitter, Inc.'s board of directors prior toits acquisition by Elon Musk, and as the co-CEO ofSalesforce (alongside co-founderMarc Benioff). Taylor was additionally one of the founders ofFriendFeed and the creator ofQuip. Since 2023, he is the founder ofSierra (an AI startup), chairman ofOpenAI, and a board member ofShopify.
In 2003, Taylor was hired by Google as an associate product manager.[3] He led the team working on features such as Search by Location and Google Local—predecessors toGoogle Maps.[4][5] While at Google, Taylor famously rewrote the entirety of Google Maps backend code in oneweekend. Taylor leftGoogle in June 2007 to joinventure capital firmBenchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he and several other former Google employees founded thesocial network web siteFriendFeed.[6][7] Taylor was CEO of FriendFeed until August 2009, when the company was acquired byFacebook for an estimated $50 million.[8] The acquisition led to Facebook adopting the "Like" button from FriendFeed.[9] After the acquisition, Taylor joined Facebook and became CTO in 2010.[10]
In 2017, Taylor was named chief product officer at Salesforce.[2] He was named president and chief operating officer at Salesforce two years later.[15] As COO, Taylor led Salesforce's acquisition ofSlack Technologies, which closed in 2021.[16] He also led the creation of a system dubbed Customer 360 at Salesforce[17] and started an associate product manager program at the company.[11] In November 2021, Taylor was named vice chair and co-CEO at Salesforce.[9] On November 30, 2022, it was announced that Taylor would be stepping down as co-CEO and vice chair at Salesforce at the end of January 2023.[18][19] In February 2023, he co-founded an enterprise-focusedartificial intelligence (AI) startup, Sierra.[20][21]
He married Karen Padham in 2006, whom he met while working at Google. The couple has three children.[2] He is a fan of Stanford football. His father, mother, and older sister also attended Stanford.[26]
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