Chief Technology Officer, Zebra
Search every verified Tom Bianculli interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Tom Bianculli, Chief Technology Officer at Zebra Technologies, discussed the company's role in retail and supply chain technology during a January 2025 interview at the New York Stock Exchange for theCUBE + NYSE Wired's NRF Media Week. He described Zebra as "hidden in plain sight," noting that its devices are used in checkout lanes, retail stores, and package delivery. Bianculli highlighted a demonstration with Qualcomm, Google, and a major North American retailer in which a picture of a shelf could identify 70 products within a second, with generative AI then determining next-best actions and orchestrating workflows. He also announced Zebra Companion, an agentic AI offering for frontline workers that includes knowledge, sales, merchandising, and device agents. Bianculli cited a Korn Ferry estimate of a shortage of 85 million workers by the end of the decade, leading to $8 trillion in unrealized economic output, and predicted a trillion-dollar shift in data center and edge deployments over the next 24 months. In a 2017 interview at the Bloomberg Breakaway Summit, Bianculli described Zebra's focus on providing visibility and services across retail, transportation logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare through barcode printing, barcode reading, RFID, and mobile computing technologies. He evangelized a category called "Enterprise Asset Intelligence," which he said intersects with data-driven strategies, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing. Bianculli emphasized the importance of personalization in brick-and-mortar retail and noted that the same data can be sliced differently for store managers, workers, and shoppers. He stated that consumers demand instant fulfillment and that ubiquitous connectivity—machines talking to machines and humans—will change how businesses interact with customers and manage their own assets.
“We like to say we're hidden in plain sight — if you've been at a checkout lane or you've been in any retail store you've had a package delivered to your front door you've seen our devices; you may not have noticed the logo but it's been there.”
“Korn Ferry is actually estimating that by the end of the decade there'll be a shortage of 85 million workers ... they're anticipating that's going to result in 8 trillion dollars of unrealized economic output.”
“We demoed in the booth with Qualcomm, with Google and with a major North American retailer the ability to literally snap a picture of a shelf and within a second be able to identify all 70 products on that shelf ... the system then ingests all of that captured data and using generative AI decides what are the right nex...”
“We predict in our research a trillion dollar shift is going to happen over the next 24 months around data center and edge deployments ... the money has to come from somewhere — it's got to come from the old stuff, so stuff will be killed to feed the new stuff.”
SiliconANGLE Media Inc. Co-Founder and Co-CEO John Furrier hosts Tom Bianculli, CTO at Zebra Technologies as part of theCUBE + NYSE Wired presentation of NRF Media Week - AI Retail Leaders from the New York Stock Exchange.
Interviewed at the Bloomberg Breakaway Summit, Tom Bianculli, Zebra’s Chief Technology Officer, discusses the role Enterprise Asset Intelligence plays in transforming businesses and how the growth of IoT, mobility, and cloud computing will continue to push digital transformation forward to improve employee productivity and enhance the customer experience. To learn more, go to: https://goo.gl/GMGMGq
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