Hundreds Of Salesforce Employees Fret Over Firm's NFT Plans

Salesforce employees are pushing back against the software giant's plans to enter the non-fungible tokens (NFT) market and 400 of them have signed an open letter of protest, citing environmental and economic concerns, Yoonji Han reported for Business Insider.

Photo Insert: Some Salesforce employees said in internal chats that they were shocked that the plans were announced just as the company debuted a major Super Bowl ad expressing a commitment to sustainability.

The software company announced last week it plans to launch an NFT Cloud sales platform that lets users create and sell NFTs, the Thomson Reuters Foundation News first reported.

The NFT market ballooned to $41 billion in 2021. But NFTs have been widely criticized for their carbon footprint, as well as for their unregulated and risky nature. A new study found that millions of trees would have to be planted to offset the carbon emissions of NFTs.

Addressed to Salesforce's co-CEOs, the letter underscored how the NFT market could undercut the company's five core values of trust, customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability.

"The volume of scams and fraud in the NFT space is overwhelming," employees wrote. It also highlighted environmental concerns and cited research showing the uneven distribution of the financial benefits of NFTs, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The letter also noted that employee blowback "could result in increased attrition". One employee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that he threatened to quit if the NFT plan came to fruition.

Some Salesforce employees said in internal chats that they were shocked that the plans were announced just as the company debuted a major Super Bowl ad expressing a commitment to sustainability.

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