Applied AI by The Information Staff

Two times/week

Applied AI

By The Information Staff

Applied AI focuses on deep storytelling and reporting around the application of AI in business and beyond. From how companies drive innovation, support their customers, and foster collaboration with their teams, to how CEOs are applying AI to optimize their organizations.

By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy

Recent Editions

Trase Systems President Baskar Sridharan. Photo courtesy of Trase Systems

Agents Learn to Haggle Prices with Software Vendors

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Nov 6, 2025 10:42am PST

While artificial intelligence agents continue to generate mixed results, depending on how much assistance customers get from their AI vendors, some of them have gained a new skill: negotiating software contracts.Over the past year, data management startup Cribl has been using an AI agent from procurement software startup Zip that reads Cribl’s... While artificial intelligence agents continue to generate mixed results, depending on how much...

Sridar Ramaswamy. Photo by Getty Images

When Good AI Isn’t Good Enough; Snowflake’s AI Agents Arrive

By Aaron Holmes and Amir Efrati · Nov 4, 2025 10:30am PST

Talking to business leaders about AI these days can often feel paradoxical. On one hand, AI is becoming a steady part of company software budgets, especially productivity tools like chatbots and AI coding software that individual employees use. On the other hand, there’s a persistent frustration that AI isn’t living up to the hype when it... Talking to business leaders about AI these days can often feel paradoxical. On one hand, AI...

Amy Hood. Photo by Getty Images

How Microsoft Escaped the AI Margin Squeeze; An FDE Boom

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 30, 2025 10:33am PDT

Microsoft shared some good and bad news with investors during its quarterly earnings call Wednesday: More customers have been using Microsoft’s suite of AI copilots, but many of them aren’t paying for it. Microsoft said more people are using Copilot Chat, which provides ChatGPT-like features to Office 365 subscribers for free (more advanced... Microsoft shared some good and bad news with investors during its quarterly earnings call...

Photo by Shutterstock

Microsoft’s AI Bundle Gets In Trouble

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 28, 2025 10:30am PDT

Photo by Shutterstock

Microsoft’s AI Bundle Gets In Trouble

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 28, 2025 10:30am PDT

Microsoft last year got more aggressive about getting people to pay up for artificial intelligence features in its Office productivity suite, such as those that draft emails or summarize documents. It began including AI features by default and raising the baseline price of Office for individual consumers by 30%. The maneuver paid off, as... Microsoft last year got more aggressive about getting people to pay up for artificial...

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. Getty Images

Airbnb CEO Throws Subtle Shade at OpenAI; Khosla’s Enterprise AI Fix

By Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 23, 2025 11:12am PDT

Welcome back! At its developer conference earlier this month, OpenAI showed a forthcoming feature that lets ChatGPT users access services from Expedia, Uber and Spotify directly in the chatbot. Some consumer apps might view such a feature as a threat because it bypasses their sites, preventing them from showcasing other products.For his... Welcome back! At its developer conference earlier this month, OpenAI showed a forthcoming...

Andrej Karpathy. Getty Images

A Reality Check on Agents

By Aaron Holmes · Oct 21, 2025 10:30am PDT · 2 comments

Around the start of this year, executives at artificial intelligence providers like OpenAI and Salesforce said 2025 would be “the year of agents,” making it seem like fully autonomous AI would soon take over human jobs. Since then, Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP and many others pitched roughly seven types of agent to automate white collar tasks in... Around the start of this year, executives at artificial intelligence providers like OpenAI and...

Dell Founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell. Photo via Getty Images

What We Learned From Salesforce’s Dreamforce; Using OpenAI and Anthropic For Different Tasks

By Kevin McLaughlin and Jing Yang · Oct 16, 2025 11:06am PDT

Welcome back!Salesforce is shifting its artificial intelligence strategy to boost flagging growth as even CEO Marc Benioff this week acknowledged a gap between the technology’s capabilities and corporate customers’ willingness to buy it, Erin and I reported Wednesday. At its annual Dreamforce event for customers in San Francisco, we were... Welcome back!Salesforce is shifting its artificial intelligence strategy to boost flagging growth...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo via Getty

Amazon’s Solution to Tough AI Cloud Margins: Non-Nvidia Chips

By Kevin McLaughlin and Laura Mandaro · Oct 14, 2025 10:39am PDT

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo via Getty

Amazon’s Solution to Tough AI Cloud Margins: Non-Nvidia Chips

By Kevin McLaughlin and Laura Mandaro · Oct 14, 2025 10:39am PDT

Welcome back! Salesforce’s annual customer conference Dreamforce is under way, so check back in the coming days for our coverage of the event and what it means for artificial intelligence in enterprises.Now on to today’s column…Last week, our report on the razor-thin gross profit margins Oracle generates from renting out Nvidia chips to AI... Welcome back! Salesforce’s annual customer conference Dreamforce is under way, so check back...

DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen. Screenshot via YouTube

OpenAI, Software’s Grim Reaper?

By Aaron Holmes and Erin Woo · Oct 9, 2025 10:30am PDT

OpenAI can hardly announce a new product before a chorus of tech pundits declare it will kill a bunch of other applications. In the most recent example, investors in several public software companies went into a panic last week after OpenAI showed a demo of an internal artificial intelligence tool it developed to analyze contracts. The... OpenAI can hardly announce a new product before a chorus of tech pundits declare it will kill a...

OpenAI DevDay 2025. Screenshot via YouTube/OpenAI

OpenAI Makes it Easier to Build Agents—and Harder to Switch Models

By Aaron Holmes · Oct 7, 2025 10:30am PDT · 1 comment

Over the past year, companies have been tinkering with generative artificial intelligence to create customized agents that automate complex tasks, but they’ve gotten mixed results. Now, OpenAI is pushing a new suite of tools to make the assembly of agents easier, and to peel customers away from competitors like Anthropic and Google.OpenAI on... Over the past year, companies have been tinkering with generative artificial intelligence to...

Photo by Craig Warga

Anthropic Says Its AI Can Clone Enterprise Apps Like Slack

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 2, 2025 10:30am PDT · 2 comments

When AI coding tools came into vogue in 2023 and 2024, chief information officers salivated at the idea of using them to develop their own versions of Salesforce and Slack and stop paying a fortune for enterprise apps. But the AI wasn’t accurate or consistent enough to do that.Now Anthropic is reawakening these app-replacement dreams. In a... When AI coding tools came into vogue in 2023 and 2024, chief information officers salivated at...

Satya Nadella. Photo via Getty

Microsoft Hopes Anthropic Will Solve Its Copilot Problems

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 30, 2025 10:30am PDT

Satya Nadella. Photo via Getty

Microsoft Hopes Anthropic Will Solve Its Copilot Problems

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 30, 2025 10:30am PDT

After AI coding apps like Cursor and Replit popularized “vibe coding,” Microsoft wants to make “vibe working” happen.Microsoft on Monday unveiled Office Agent, which lets people create complex PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets based on simple written prompts in the Copilot chatbot. After AI coding apps like Cursor and Replit popularized “vibe coding,” Microsoft wants to make “...

Josh Klahr, a product management leader at Snowflake. Art by Clark Miller; YouTube.

Snowflake Tries to End the AI Data-Access Wars

By Amir Efrati and Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 25, 2025 10:44am PDT

Snowflake is reversing an incendiary trend of software incumbents such as Salesforce and Atlassian walling off data in their applications from artificial intelligence startups that threaten them.On Tuesday, Snowflake said a consortium of more than a dozen other enterprise app and database providers—including, ironically, Salesforce—have... Snowflake is reversing an incendiary trend of software incumbents such as Salesforce and...

Workday Chief Technology Officer Peter Bailis. Art by Clark Miller; image via YouTube.

Every Enterprise Software Firm is Selling the Same AI Products

By Amir Efrati and Aaron Holmes · Sep 23, 2025 10:30am PDT · 1 comment

Workday has spent most of its 20-year existence selling applications that businesses use to manage their employees and financial operations. Now, the company is joining the growing list of software incumbents that are competing head-on in ways they didn’t use to, by selling the same artificial intelligence-powered applications.Last week, Workday... Workday has spent most of its 20-year existence selling applications that businesses use to...

Photo via Getty

Studios Say AI Is Finally Good Enough to Design Videogames

By Catherine Perloff and Aaron Holmes · Sep 18, 2025 10:30am PDT

Without video games, the artificial intelligence boom may not have happened: the Nvidia chips that powered recent AI breakthroughs were originally designed to process video game graphics.Now, game studios are increasingly turning to generative AI to automate the work of developing their games. Without video games, the artificial intelligence boom may not have happened: the Nvidia chips...

Marc Benioff, left, and Satya Nadella. Photos via Getty

Salesforce, Microsoft Find Selling AI to Enterprises Is Easier Said Than Done

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 16, 2025 10:30am PDT · 1 comment

Marc Benioff, left, and Satya Nadella. Photos via Getty

Salesforce, Microsoft Find Selling AI to Enterprises Is Easier Said Than Done

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 16, 2025 10:30am PDT · 1 comment

As new artificial intelligence flooded the software market over the past few years, CEOs of incumbents such as Salesforce and Microsoft said they were in pole position to capitalize on the wave.They already have relationships with the largest companies in the world, which rely on their apps as systems of record, meaning they use them to hold... As new artificial intelligence flooded the software market over the past few years, CEOs of...

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes (l) and The Information reporter Akash Pasricha (r).

Atlassian CEO Claims Edge on Glean; Trouble Exporting From Teams

By Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 11, 2025 10:41am PDT

Enterprise search startup Glean has attracted customers and venture capital thanks to an AI search tool that lets employees quickly find corporate files and data in all of the apps their companies use. But Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO and co-founder of productivity app Atlassian, thinks his company is ahead of Glean in enterprise search—despite... Enterprise search startup Glean has attracted customers and venture capital thanks to an AI...

Census Bureau Says Corporate AI Adoption is Slowing

Census Bureau Says Corporate AI Adoption is Slowing

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 9, 2025 10:30am PDT

Across American businesses, use of artificial intelligence has fallen in recent months, according to the Census Bureau’s biweekly survey of thousands of companies.The drop is especially pronounced at the largest companies surveyed: AI for “producing goods and services” peaked in June for those with 250 employees, with roughly 15% of surveyed... Across American businesses, use of artificial intelligence has fallen in recent months, according...

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO Inadvertently Stokes AI ‘Crisis’ Narrative

By Amir Efrati · Sep 4, 2025 10:30am PDT · 4 comments

After listening to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his top brass describe their excitement about the company’s artificial intelligence business for an hour and half on Wednesday, one might have thought they were taking a much deserved victory lap.“Every single one of our customers is becoming an agentic enterprise,” Benioff said.In reality, his... After listening to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his top brass describe their excitement about...

Replit CEO Amjad Masad.

Why Replit is Betting AI Prices Will Never Come Down

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 2, 2025 10:30am PDT

Replit CEO Amjad Masad.

Why Replit is Betting AI Prices Will Never Come Down

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 2, 2025 10:30am PDT

The prices businesses are paying for AI has become the subject of much moaning and gnashing of teeth among startups and their investors in recent weeks. At the heart of the issue, as we reported two weeks ago, is that the price of state-of-the-art models from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI haven’t fallen much in the past year, and AI... The prices businesses are paying for AI has become the subject of much moaning and gnashing of...