A former Salesforce vice president, Karl Wirth is suing the company, alleging that it falsely advertised the capabilities of its Customer Data Platform (CDP) and retaliated against him for raising concerns about the product’s claims.
Karl Wirth, who joined Salesforce in 2020 and was promoted to senior vice president in January 2022, said in a lawsuit filed on July 28 that Salesforce falsely claimed that its CDP, Genie, can process large amounts of customer data in “real-time.”
Wirth said that he recommended that Salesforce pursue this software capability in late 2021 or early 2022, but it became clear to the CDP team that it could not “develop the technology in time” for Salesforce’s announcement in September 2022. The lawsuit also claimed that the CDP team “wanted to redefine the meaning of ‘real-time,’ so that it could falsely claim that the CDP operated in real-time.”
Wirth added that he raised concerns about the product’s claims to the CDP team and other “key executives,” but his concerns were ignored. He also said that he was retaliated against for raising concerns, including being subjected to a “deceitful campaign to diminish” his reputation at the company.
Wirth who was fired from Salesforce in October 2022, shortly after he raised concerns about the product’s claims made a statement to the media, saying he is “seeking monetary damages due to what the lawsuit calls Salesforces’ ‘whistleblower retaliation.'”
The sources for this piece include an article in BusinessInsider.
