Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo credit: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch, under Creative Commons license

Salesforce, the cloud software company, has notably surpassed Oracle, one of its biggest competitors, by market capitalization for the first time ever. Currently (as of writing), Salesforce’s market capitalization hovers at around $179 billion while Oracle’s hovers at around $176 billion. It’s such that Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris termed surpassing Oracle in market cap as a moment that “feels like a milestone,” and not surprisingly, given Salesforce’s long-standing relationship with Oracle. For those not in the know, Salesforce co-founder and current CEO Marc Benioff previously worked at Oracle and is a protege of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. During his time at Oracle, Benioff notably became the youngest vice president in the company’s history at only 25 years old.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison was the inaugural investor in Salesforce and an early board member before stepping down after things grew tense between him and Marc Benioff. Things grew sour after Salesforce and Oracle began directly competing, and since then, Benioff and Ellison have constantly thrown shade at each other.

Despite the surpass in market capitalization, Salesforce’s revenue remains sizeably less than Oracle’s; $17 billion vs $39 billion in fiscal 2019, but Salesforce is, however, growing faster, with its 2019 revenue up 28% from the previous year while Oracle’s slightly changed ($39.8 billion in 2018 vs $39.5 billion in 2019). Oracle’s revenue has hovered between $37 billion-$40 billion for eight years running while Salesforce’s has grown a whopping 640% during that timeframe. Salesforce notably beat Oracle as the first between both to hit $10 billion in cloud revenues.

Currently, Salesforce employs about 49,000 people, compared to about 136,000 employed by Oracle.