Applied AI by The Information Staff

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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.

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Recent Editions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

Art via Mike Sullivan

Why OpenAI is Going After Healthcare

By Amir Efrati · Aug 28, 2025 10:30am PDT

It was easy to miss last week’s announcement that Ashley Alexander, a 12-year veteran of Facebook and Instagram, is becoming vice president of health products at OpenAI, with the goal of improving “healthcare outcomes and access.” Alexander’s LinkedIn post didn’t give clues about exactly what products she will oversee, but it’s not hard to see... It was easy to miss last week’s announcement that Ashley Alexander, a 12-year veteran of Facebook...

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

By Amir Efrati · Aug 26, 2025 10:32am PDT · 11 comments

It’s been hard to avoid a study last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which claimed that 95% of corporate efforts to use artificial intelligence failed to boost the bottom line for the surveyed companies. In other words, “only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools reach production.” Let’s set aside the study’s limitations,... It’s been hard to avoid a study last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which...

Sam Altman. Photo via Getty

Why AI Still Feels Pricy

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 21, 2025 10:30am PDT

Sam Altman. Photo via Getty

Why AI Still Feels Pricy

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 21, 2025 10:30am PDT

Our Wednesday story about rising costs of businesses that pay for advanced artificial intelligence from OpenAI and Anthropic stirred strong reactions from readers. OpenAI researcher Aidan McLaughlin wondered aloud where we had gotten the idea that state-of-the-art AI was supposed to get cheaper. The answer: his boss, Sam Altman. OpenAI... Our Wednesday story about rising costs of businesses that pay for advanced artificial...

Art via Mike Sullivan

Is AI Better Than Humans at Interviewing People?

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 19, 2025 10:39am PDT · 1 comment

Job seekers are increasingly running into employers using artificial intelligence-powered job interviewers, and the process has garnered backlash and in some cases sparked lawsuits from spurned candidates. But AI interviewers might actually increase candidates’ chances of getting hired.A new research study published this week from the... Job seekers are increasingly running into employers using artificial intelligence-powered job...

Secret Snowflake AI Revenue Figure Shows Brand-Name LLMs Reign Supreme

By Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 14, 2025 1:02pm PDT

For all the talk about the rise of low-cost or open-source AI models, enterprises are still gravitating to brand-name models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. That’s prompting database providers like Snowflake, Databricks and Oracle to strike deals allowing database customers to use the brand-name AI to build chatbots and search tools that... For all the talk about the rise of low-cost or open-source AI models, enterprises are still...

Replit CEO Amjad Masad. Photo via Getty

Why Flat Pricing for AI Agents Won’t Last

By Aaron Holmes · Aug 12, 2025 10:30am PDT

AI agents are getting more advanced—but they’re also getting more expensive to run. That trend is beginning to force AI agent sellers to change their pricing models to pass on more of the cost of running the agents to their users.Traditionally, AI companies have sold their products to businesses like most other types of software: by charging a... AI agents are getting more advanced—but they’re also getting more expensive to run. That trend is...

Photo via Getty

OpenAI Says GPT-5 Is One-Size-Fits-All; New Open Model Was Cheap to Train

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Aaron Holmes · Aug 7, 2025 11:05am PDT

Photo via Getty

OpenAI Says GPT-5 Is One-Size-Fits-All; New Open Model Was Cheap to Train

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Aaron Holmes · Aug 7, 2025 11:05am PDT

OpenAI unveiled its new flagship AI model, GPT-5, on Thursday. And with the launch, OpenAI seems to be moving more towards offering an entire AI system to its customers versus giving them the choice between models. The company said during a live-streamed presentation that it would be withdrawing user access to its older models, meaning that... OpenAI unveiled its new flagship AI model, GPT-5, on Thursday. And with the launch, OpenAI seems...