Tech Disruptors

David Risher, CEO of Lyft, shares insights on the ridesharing industry’s current duopoly and the potential for growth within the gig economy. He discusses the crucial connection between rider satisfaction and driver loyalty while exploring the optimization of algorithms for better service. The conversation delves into the landscape of autonomous vehicles and their integration into ridesharing, examining partnerships, psychological barriers to adoption, and future innovations powered by AI. Risher emphasizes prioritizing service quality over competition in this rapidly evolving market.

In this insightful discussion, Steve Schmidt, Amazon's Chief Security Officer, emphasizes that security is fundamentally a people and culture issue, not just a technology problem. He delves into the cybersecurity landscape in the age of generative AI, highlighting the risks of both open-source and proprietary technologies. Schmidt also tackles the diverse motivations of cyber threat actors and stresses the importance of building a proactive security culture across organizations. Additionally, he addresses the urgent need for skilled cybersecurity professionals and innovative solutions like AI to enhance decision-making.

Simone Severini, Director of Quantum Technologies at Amazon Web Services and a PhD expert in quantum computing, engages with analyst Anurag Rana on the future of quantum tech. They discuss the critical metrics of qubits, highlighting quality and scalability. Severini delves into the challenges of quantum hardware development and the innovative strides AWS is making, including the Ocelot chip. The conversation also touches on the transformative potential of quantum computing across industries and the importance of understanding realistic expectations for its evolution.

Jim Stratton, Chief Technology Officer at Workday with over 12 years of experience, discusses the transformative role of AI in HR and financial software. He emphasizes Workday's unique dual strategy for AI integration, enhancing existing functionalities while introducing advanced machine learning. Stratton highlights the significance of customizable AI applications and the complexities of pricing models in the enterprise sector. He also dives into the role of AI agents as co-pilots for business operations and the importance of security in managing these digital workforce components.

Debanjan Saha, CEO of DataRobot and former leader at Google Cloud and AWS, shares insights on the growing demand for domain-specific AI solutions. He discusses how enterprises can leverage predictive analytics to tackle specific business challenges. The conversation delves into the importance of governance in AI deployment and the balance between software licensing and consumption pricing. Saha also highlights the innovative 'dogfooding' approach within DataRobot, using internal AI tools to enhance growth and address key challenges in AI adoption.

Chase Lochmiller, Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe, dives into the critical need for energy-efficient AI data centers. He discusses how Crusoe’s innovative, vertically integrated approach is shaping the future of AI infrastructure. Topics include the strategic importance of clean energy, challenges in GPU optimization, and modular design for faster construction. Chase also highlights the company's recent funding successes and the long-term financial landscape of AI investment, hinting at a transformative future driven by sustainable technologies.

“For every knowledge worker, every business professional, an important element of what they do is creativity,” Anil Chakravarthy, Adobe’s Digital Experience president, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. On his third appearance on the Tech Disruptors podcast, Chakravarthy goes in depth on how Adobe is integrating its enterprise marketing tools, along with its creative-application portfolio. Additionally, Chakravarthy discusses the importance of the content supply chain and what has led Adobe’s portfolio to amass over $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.

“Most customer service reps have five to 20 different tabs open in their browser of all these different systems — it’s the modern equivalent of the swivel chair,” said Salesforce AI’s Adam Evans, executive vice president and general manager. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Evans joined Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior technology analyst Anurag Rana for a discussion encompassing several key initiatives Salesforce is developing with data and AI for products such as Agentforce and Data Cloud. Additionally, the two recap the company’s recent partnership with Google Cloud and what Gemini can do for the former’s AI tools.

The infusion of compute-heavy AI across enterprise applications and work flows, growing appetite for real-time business intelligence and more digitization calls for an expansion of compute, storage and networking resources. The growing dependency on digital services and tools likely necessitates ongoing monitoring of the IT value chain to prevent business disruption and reduce time to remediate. These shifts will likely drive demand for platforms like Grafana Labs. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Raj Dutt, co-founder and CEO at Grafana, joins Sunil Rajgopal, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior software analyst, to discuss the impact of DeepSeek, emerging data and large language model-focused observability solutions. They also talk about implications from agentic work flows, future growth paths and competition.

Google is an AI-first company, according to Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of compute and machine learning infrastructure at the company. It has deep expertise in all of the relevant domains customers might need - research, models and finally how they get built into applications and services. Lohmeyer sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Mandeep Singh on this episode of Tech Disruptors to discuss how Google Cloud infrastructure supports the company’s internal apps and external customers. They discuss various aspects of Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer and TPUs in supporting Gemini and other large language model training and inference workloads.