SaaStr 717: How Enterprise SaaS Companies are Buying AI (or Not) with ContextualAI, Anthropic, and Glean
Jan 17, 2024
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CEOs of ContextualAI and Anthropic discuss the adoption of AI in enterprise. They explore the barriers to adoption and the most exciting use cases in big companies. The demands placed on software companies, including security and compliance, are also discussed. Concerns about fine tuning and training data for language models are addressed. The speakers envision a future with personal assistants doing our work and technology freeing up our time.
Large companies are interested in applying language models to various use cases, including customer support, content creation, sales and marketing, and engineering.
Adoption of generative AI in enterprise faces barriers such as fear of missing out on better technologies, security concerns around data leaving company environments, compliance issues, and challenges with evaluation and resource allocation.
Deep dives
Big Companies Excited About Generative AI
Enterprises are excited to use generative AI to improve their products and transform their business operations. Use cases include customer support, content creation, sales and marketing, and engineering. Large companies, including banks and retailers, are showing interest in applying language models to various use cases, with some having hundreds of potential use cases to explore. The main challenge is that companies are excited but unsure about how to fully leverage generative AI and what it will look like in practice.
Barriers to Adoption in Enterprise
Adoption of generative AI in enterprise faces several barriers. Some companies are hesitant due to the fear of missing out on potentially better technologies. Security concerns around data leaving company environments and compliance issues related to enterprise knowledge governance also hinder adoption. Companies are grappling with the need for more centralized procurement strategies and ensuring AI tools stay within enterprise boundaries. Other barriers include challenges with evaluation, understanding how to define success, and dedicating resources to explore and implement new technologies.
Investments in Building Enterprise-Grade Products
To make their products enterprise-ready, companies are making investments in security, compliance, data governance, and certification processes. Working with cloud service providers such as Amazon and Google helps alleviate procurement complexities. Deep integration with enterprise systems, addressing concerns around fine-tuning and training data, and focusing on solving enterprise-specific problems like hallucination, citation, and compliance are also priorities. Additionally, providing support for running software within customer cloud environments contributes to building trust and meeting enterprise requirements.
SaaStr 717: How Enterprise SaaS Companies are Buying AI (or Not) with ContextualAI, Anthropic, and Glean
While AI seems to have gone mainstream for consumers and smaller SaaS companies, but what about the big guys?
While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it’s not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems. So, where are we now in the adoption cycle for the Enterprise world?
We brought together an Enterprise SaaS panel with:
Douwe Kiela, CEO of ContextualAI
Benjamin Mann, co-founder of Anthropic
Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean
and Sandhya Hedge, General Partner at Unusual VC
To help us figure out how to sell GenAI software to some of the biggest organizations in the world.
SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
Join us in 2024 at:
SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200
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