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Aaron Levie: Startups win in the AI era [video]

anoojb

Honest question — why is the CEO of a Enterprise cloud storage company so out in the public touting the benefits of AI?

Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive, SharePoint, etc. so consistently speaking about the benefits of AI?

A couple top of mind thoughts on the range of outcomes:

-Perhaps it's more of a requisite function of a company that went through a long phase of mild-growth (even anemic relative to the Nasdaq composite) and is seeking to maintain relevance with PR/Marketing spend

-They are investing in a step function product roadmap that could accelerate revenue growth and are positioning the brand for a future product launch.

-A slightly more cynical view, the CEO is searching for a new home for the company? It's been over 20 years, which fees like long time for a public technology company to have a single CEO.

-The CEO is positioning himself personally for a new VC fund. He's had some success with previous investments and is looking to preemptively market his new fund.

-A slightly more realistic view, the CEO (who seems really enthusiastic) is honestly just like the rest of us and got nerd-swiped by this AI thing and feels genuinely excited about it :-)

Either way he seems very well networked and able to appear nearly everywhere and re-cap information and insights from other source material. I'm curious what the underlying incentives/outcomes are for this kind of PR blitz.

mettamage

> Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive

Google execs are constantly talking about the benefits of AI. People lower on the totem pole just don't have the same platform as the top execs at Google do.

And by Google, I mean Alphabet, not just search.