How Enterprise AI Moves from Chatbots to Real Work

You know, I've been at the forefront of multiple revolutions and I was building databases and data warehouses in Google and Amazon during that time. I think AI revolution is probably an order of magnitude bigger than those. I want to be on the other side of disruption where we are disrupting things. This is not going to take jobs away from people. It's actually going to create many more jobs, lot more jobs that we cannot imagine today.

Welcome back to the Nebbi is for Startups podcast. My name is Markish Patrice and I'll be your host today. With me is Dibbanjan Saha. He's the CEO of DataRobot, the leading platform for the agentic workforce. So Dibbanjan, welcome.

Thank you for inviting me and happy to be here.

I think sometimes we get caught up in the hype, what's happening in the industry. And I'm curious to know, would you say that this is hype or would you say that there's a real evolution kind of happening?

Oh, there is definitely a real evolution happening. And I've been at the forefront of multiple revolutions, I call it. The internet revolution, I was building optical switches at that time. Then cloud revolution, I was building databases and data warehouses in Google and Amazon during that time. And everybody said those were hypes, and they turned out to be very, very real. I think AI revolution is probably an order of magnitude bigger than those, right? Of course, whenever there is a new technology, there is a new revolution. There is a mismatch between investment and outcome, and that always happens. Doesn't mean it's hype. It's some adjustment that might happen sometime in the future. But the opportunity is real, and it's a huge, huge opportunity.

Well, I would agree with that. I would say that, you know, I think I work a lot with startups and it's always so fascinating to see how they're thinking about this in a very different way. I think sometimes if you're further removed from it, you might think like, oh, that thing's going to go away. But then the closer you get to it, the more real it feels, the more real it becomes. And so I think that that's interesting. But I want to go back a little bit to your experience and kind of you've been building your You've really had a front row seat to the internet, to the evolution of this technology. And I'm curious to know, because you started at DataRobot back in 2022, but before that, did you see this wave of AI coming or did it kind of come as a surprise to you?

No, it was not a surprise. Of course, the rate and pace of change kind of took everybody by surprise to some extent, but I saw that coming. In fact, I was working in Google at that time, and I thought the next thing is going to be AI, and that's why I came to DataRobot, although my wife tells me that I have always been a robot and finally found the right company to work for.

I need to meet your wife. I need to meet your wife.

But I saw this coming. And this was very, very obvious. But the rate at which it is moving, that, by the way, I'll tell you, surprised me. And it gets faster and faster at every crank. That is the surprising part. But I'm really excited about the opportunity and how quickly we can change things and, of course,