On the 67th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) talks with Joel Hron, Chief Technology Officer at Thomson Reuters. Joel shares how Thomson Reuters is rebuilding 150-year-old knowledge-work franchises in legal, tax, and compliance around agentic AI, what changed when more than half of his engineers' code started being written by AI, and why the right mental model for working with AI is "colleague," not "copilot."

Quick Hits from Joel:

On the engineer-to-controller reframe: "Your job as an engineer shifted from being the contributor and owner of the code base to being more the controller and governor of the code base."

On the trust gaps blocking enterprise agents: "The control system around the agent is something that I think really needs to be built out further for enterprises to get comfortable with allowing agents to just do work in a more independent way."

On doing technical review at 5,000-engineer scale: "You can literally go clone the repo and spend an hour with Claude or with Codex talking about the code."

Book Recommendation: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

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Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share specific ways AI changes how work gets done in the enterprise.

Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 66th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) talks with Aldo Noseda, Chief Information Officer at Eastman Chemical Company. Eastman is applying AI in two directions at once: productizing data science for customers (e.g., Fluid Genius for predicting thermal-fluid degradation) and deploying “AI for the masses” internally via a secure, customized layer on top of tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, with clear guardrails based on situational risk.

Quick Hits from Aldo:

On customer-facing AI as a product: “We at Eastman, in the last year or so started to do something fairly unique for the chemical industry is that we started to offer to our customers digital solutions in the form of services. And we have four products in the market right now that we are that we are offering. One of those is the product is called Fluid Genius.”

On “AI for the masses” with security and customization: “What we had to do is create an engine utilizing, obviously, the base of the existing products in the market, but wrap it up with a solution that was not only secure, but customized to the needs of that company. And we deploy that very quickly. Right now, we have approximately 6000 recurring users utilizing that engine for individual consumption. That is where I call AI for the masses.”

On fast operational wins: “We loaded the script, we put it on top of the helpdesk, and in two weeks we have the engine up and running for our users to consume… we were in from 5000 lines of code per month for a programmer to like 40,000 lines of code using AI agent.

Recent Book Recommendation: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

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Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share specific ways AI changes how work gets done in the enterprise. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 65th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) and Saam Motamedi (General Partner, Greylock Partners) talk with Steve Chase, KPMG International Global Head of AI & Digital Innovation and KPMG US Vice Chair, AI & Digital Innovation.

KPMG’s AI push is not “tools on the side.” Steve outlines an operating model that starts with trusted AI principles and embedded training, then scales through firmwide enterprise search and targeted agent-driven products. The throughline is simple: unlock people at the edge while keeping control structures, observability, and accountability in view.

Quick Hits from Steve:

On AI forcing org redesign (not just tool adoption): “We're going to rewrite the org charts, we are going to rewrite how work gets done.”

On embedding AI training into the job: “If I train you how to do something in the course of training you how to do your job, you're going to be way better at using the AI when it's contextualized for you, right?”

On the first foundational use case: “One of our number one early objectives with our AI program was to solve for enterprise search. I should be able to find out the answer to what we’re up to, what we think about something.”

Recent Book Recommendation: Creation by Gore Vidal

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share specific ways AI changes how work gets done in the enterprise. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 64th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talks with Bill Briggs, Chief Technology Officer at Deloitte. Bill argues that most organizations stall because they try to graft new models onto old workflows, and because their data and system foundations were never built for agentic execution. He shares a practical “start at the outcome” framing, why modernization still matters (even in the GenAI era), and how trust, security, and privacy have to be engineered in, not audited after the fact.

Quick Hits from Bill:

On AI-native starting at the top: “I actually start with the CEO and the chair and sit them down and say, if this isn't coming from you and this not this isn't about here in a year, it's about here. And what that means. We should stop the conversation…”

On why agent pilots stall without foundations: “[Leaders hoped GenAI meant] we didn’t have to do… hard work in data foundations… [but enterprises lack] orchestration backbone… microservice enablement… without that, the bounds of what agents can do [are] limited.”

On redesigning outcomes, not steps: “The point is, you want to have folded clean laundry when you need it. Not [a] step by step replacement of the steps you learned as a child to complete that task.”

Recent Book Recommendation: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share specific ways AI changes how work gets done in the enterprise. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 63rd episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (co-founder and CEO, Abnormal AI) and Saam Motamedi (General Partner, Greylock Partners) talk with Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU treats AI like a product and a platform: build internal capacity, run structured grant cycles to surface real workflows, and ship a “builder” that can support tens of thousands of users. Gonick also lays out why student agency matters, and why universities that wait for vendors risk becoming “nothing but vendor management.”

Quick hits from Lev:

On building an internal AI acceleration team: “We literally took, initially 20 and now it's 40 people dedicated from morning till night working on platform technology, security, compliance, tooling, building tools to support what we knew that needed to grow up to be, again, a low code, no code kind of environment.”

On scaling demand through structured internal grants: “We thought there be, you know, 40 or 50 great ideas, you know, as we speak today. Now we're through through four full rounds of engagements. We have over 600 projects in-flight, right now.”

On fixing the friction-filled student journey with AI: “Focus in on transforming the ways in which students have to navigate incredibly, difficult, friction-filled, journey. Applying for, getting into, having to do financial aid, landing in a dorm room, [solving] some of the back office through again tools that they're using in their consumer life.”

Recent Book Recommendation: Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert

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Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/.

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 62nd episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Mike Trkay, CIO at FICO. Mike explains how FICO is moving AI from pilots to production by prioritizing ROI, data foundations, and governance. He argues for sanctioned LLM access to curb leakage, system integration for business-wide answers, and smaller domain models when accuracy, compliance, and trust matter.

Quick hits from Mike:

On the shift from pilots to ROI: “We’re leaving that phase and starting to get to the point of going, okay, but where’s the true return on that investment?”

On the must-do for enterprises: “Everybody who works for you… they’re going to go use one of the LLMs somewhere… and probably share data and proprietary data.”

On why one big model is not enough: “Sometimes you need the PhD. Who’s got who speaks the jargon, understands the context, and it helps deal with some of the hallucinations and bias, and other things that could be influencing.”

Recent Book Recommendation: The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube you listen to podcasts.

Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 61st episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Allen Fazio, CIO at Houlihan Lokey. Allen lays out how a global mid-cap M&A leader is rethinking investment banking as a professional service powered by AI. By putting a single orchestration layer at the center and starting with “100-level” use cases for analysts and interns, he is building an innovation engine that protects regulatory exposure while transforming how human bankers research, model, and execute deals.

Quick hits from Allen:

On orchestration and data advantage: “We've been looking for almost three years for what I'll call the orchestration layer. What do we put in the middle of the picture?”

On analyst-first AI adoption: “So for us, our focus is going to be on the lookout level, right. Let's start with the analysts, associates, and interns. And let's really focus on their capabilities, where I think some of our peers are. I'm not saying they're wrong, but where they're spending more time than I'm going to spend is on these high-end use cases.”

On culture over tools: “You're building out an innovation culture, not deploying a technology or a toolset.”

Recent Book Recommendation: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Abnormal Studios.

On the 60th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (CEO and co-founder, Abnormal AI) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) speak to Ronald White, the former CIO of Avanade. Ronald brings deep experience leading global enterprise IT at Avanade and shares actionable lessons from orchestrating large‑scale AI adoption across business functions.

Quick hits from Ronald:

On moving beyond surface-level AI: "What are we going to get past these little parlor tricks and actually do something that impacts the enterprise?"

On proving value through AI adoption: "A lawyer using general AI technology will 100 percent of the time beat a lawyer who is not. Period. End of statement."

On early enterprise wins with AI: "You’re changing the game right away... and so if you don’t stay on top of it and iterate and iterate and iterate, you lose."

Recent Book Recommendation: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Enterprise AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Discover more great lessons from tech leaders and experts in emerging AI technologies at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Josh Meer