Hi everyone. How are you? Thank you both for joining me. When I was chatting with your teams about this conversation today, it was very clear that both of you have such a strong point of view on culture at this moment. Between the two of you, you have built multiple successful businesses, so you understand scale, you understand change. I'm excited to sit down with you to talk about how you're leading your teams through change, and also to give some of those in the audience some ideas on how to manage their teams through this very anxious period. But Macro Talk is focused on the big picture, and on the future of work. I do want to start with news this week. There has been significant backlash to the AI movement. There was an unfortunate incident in Indianapolis where a councilman who voted to approve a rezoning measure that would allow an LA company to build a data center was targeted in his home. Someone shot into his home, and the attacker left a note on his doorstep saying, 'No data centers.' What is going on right now with the societal perception of AI and how you're thinking about it as you're building, because the timelines are merging right now. The feeds are merging. Eric?
So, in my view, I think the power of AI is truly meaningful. It's more like a natural reaction. For any new technology, it's always like that. This time, AI is unprecedented in terms of the impact to human beings, to society. I think we have to move forward, think about the future. I'm still very optimistic. I do not think it makes sense to pause all the data center building. Eventually, you still need to do that, but we have to manage the risk associated with that. That's probably the better path forward.
But, Arvind, the message is clearly not being received in many local communities, and these initiatives are actually making a significant impact on these build-outs. The New York Times had a report, and they, working independent data, showed that in major cities, development has actually stymied for the first time in a number of years. From your perspective, how does the message actually get across to everyone who is not the first-order beneficiaries of this movement?
Yeah, look, AI is a powerful technology, and it's going to be here with all of us. I think what we're not doing a great job on is how it can actually benefit all of us, and how it can go from being a Silicon Valley moment where all the beneficiaries are here, to know that it's actually going to change your work, remove the most frustrating or tedious parts of your work that make you spend 50 hours and still feel behind. We have to do a better job making AI a tool that is not so much about job loss, and more about up-leveling you, re-skilling you, and allowing you to do things you always wanted to do: strategic work, creative work, and take some of that mundane low-level stuff out of your day-to-day work.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think this audience in particular has a problem with it. I think it's a question for me because as you're going out to market, does this public societal perception have an impact on how your companies can grow and how the industry at large can grow when we know the physical constraints of data centers are so key to the entire unlock of the promise of AI? I guess aside from buying a media company like TVPN, what are the other solutions from your vantage point that you can do to change the narrative and help get that message across more clearly?
I think every high-tech company, particularly in Silicon Valley, will be part of that. Together, not only do we build the technology, but all the high-tech companies together, if we can create some brand new job opportunities and help everyone's productivity and drive GDP growth, ultimately people will understand that. As I mentioned, it's a natural reaction. As time goes on, everyone will understand we need to move forward with the help of technology.
Well, we'll see, because again this is troubling. I'm sure when you see these headlines that leaders are being targeted and policy makers. The other big news this week: Ronan Farrow's deeply reported piece into OpenAI and Sam Altman revealing all sorts of details about his ouster. Is Sam Altman ruining AI for everybody? It seems like every time he's in the news, the perception is so linked to what he does. I'm curious how you guys are looking at his particular presence and personality in the industry.
Well, for us, we are an enterprise-focused AI company. While you mention these negative perceptions of AI, when you think about enterprises, these are not businesses in Silicon Valley. You talk about a business in Columbus, Ohio, or anywhere in the US or outside the US. The belief in AI is very, very high, and there is no business we come across that does not want to embrace this technology, bring the power of AI to all of their employees. One of the most encouraging things I see is businesses are thinking about how to use AI to increase their top line or optimize their bottom line, make more profits. There's also a lot of focus on how to modernize their workforce, make every person better, get them to leverage AI in their day-to-day work. So there is a very positive sentiment towards AI when it comes to businesses. I would challenge you a little bit on that. Yes, you see these stories, and AI does have problems it creates, like some job loss which will be painful to people, but largely I would say this sentiment is positive.
Yeah, sentiment for sure. I mean, it's different, Eric, we were going to say.
So, my perspective: we all should give Sam and OpenAI great credit. Remember the ChatGPT moment? We downloaded ChatGPT, we all benefited from that. Afterwards, the ChatGPT moment gave us a lot of imagination about what AI can do for us. Look at all the new startup companies, a lot of innovations. We all need to thank OpenAI and Sam.
Yeah, I think it was more around the general perception of AI the public has. There have been lots of surveys and studies about public perception and anxiety. I just wonder if that noise doesn't hinder your growth. What I'm hearing is it doesn't really impact what you're doing day-to-day, all this other noise from other companies and CEOs. Is that right?
Absolutely. We're working harder to make AI really benefit society.
Okay, perfect. Well, let's get into work. Arvind, you said something that really gave me the germ of this idea for this topic. You said on a podcast, there's a lot of noise about AI transforming work, but far less about what's really working inside real companies. You guys have just put out a report around what is working. So, tell us what is working at this very critical moment.
Yeah, so I think AI today, in terms of impact, is multiple orders of magnitude better than last year. We have gone well beyond experiments and POCs to fundamentally changing how people work. Everybody knows about software engineering, where many companies have banned humans manually writing code; it has to be written by AI. When you think about that transformation, that particular work is now completely done by AI. Similarly, we're seeing big success in customer success. When people have questions, enterprises are now able to leverage AI to significantly optimize their call centers. Use cases are now not limited to specific departments. These successes are happening across HR, finance, marketing, sales. But today we're still very much trying to build our muscle memory around AI, trying to get more and more people inside the company to use it the same way as your top 10% of employees use it.
Eric, something that was really striking to me is that when you began Zoom, the second thing you did was to write down the culture of the company after you bought some used furniture. So, when you think about culture now and if everybody has AI agents to manage, how do you create culture at a company when your co-workers are AI agents?
That's a good question. I know how to make our employees happy because that's our culture, to deliver happiness. I still do not know how to make our agent happy. Maybe they need to be happy? I mean, don't they just work for us? Who cares about their happiness? Agents work 24/7 as long as we have power. I think agents probably will be happy. That's the reason why you leverage technology to build a greater culture. You need to think about how to do more for your employees, make sure they're happy, they can deliver all the tasks. If you deploy an agent, guess what? It works. This is much better.
You guys have known each other for a while. Glean and Zoom also partnered up very recently. Is that the future right now of software, more integrations like this? Today I think Intuit also announced something around building into Claude, and I know you guys are working with Workday. I'm getting the sense that the future of this entire industry is actually more collaboration around SaaS. Would you agree?
Absolutely. While we sometimes hear questions about some enterprise systems locking down data, I think the theme is that AI has truly increased interoperability with technologies like MCP. Businesses are realizing that there is a lot of valuable information in their systems, and if they let other systems easily use that information, you can actually get more usage and more value for your customers. Since we depend on applications being open to add value, we've seen over the last year that we've been able to build hundreds of new integrations where there was no way to tap into those enterprise systems before with APIs, but now you can.
You both also have slightly different views on the future of work. Arvind, you have said that you don't want to actually shrink teams, you don't want to go to meetings anymore, you're trying to send your digital avatar. What is the future really going to be like? Is it going to be more of what Arvind is building or more of what you're building?
I think first of all, we build a product agent. Glean also builds a product agent. The two agents can work together. Moreover, my personal agent can interact with my friend Arvind's personal agent. We can schedule a meeting, like our earnings call. I do not read any script anymore. Do you know our earnings call? It's pretty much my AI avatar. We did very well for three quarters in a row already.
I guess what I'm saying is, again, also the better experience. You're going to miss talking to Arvind. I mean, you guys are friends. Aren't you going to miss talking to each other? That's the whole point, right? Technology is to connect each other. Now you're adding another layer. I don't know. Arvind, how do you feel that Eric doesn't want to talk to you anymore, that he's sending his digital avatar to talk to you?
