Together

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AI needs villages-worth of computational power, and Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure are the cloud computing titans of choice. To challenge their dominance, Together “brings together” the little guys to provide AI researchers and developers comparable levels of computing power, which can be five times as cheap as what the giants of cloud computing charge, according to cofounder and CEO Vipul Ved Prakash. The startup, which is led by Stanford professors and tech industry veterans, announced $20 million in seed funding in May 2023. Together outsources a developer’s computational needs to alternative data centers—even former Bitcoin miners. And it also offers a comprehensive platform for AI development for both general developers as well as those who want to build their own models from scratch. “There’s already a fair bit of concentration with OpenAI and Google,” Prakash said. “So I think there is value in our more decentralized, less locked-in ecosystem.”

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Three host nations operating in sync. More than one hundred matches. Billions watching. The 2026 World Cup is not just the world’s biggest sporting event, it is one of the most complex 	operational challenges this year. The COO of U.S. Soccer is coordinating a multi-venue tournament expected to generate more than $17 billion in U.S. GDP and create 185,000 jobs, demanding precision across logistics, security, workforce planning, and stakeholder alignment. For Nike’s COO, success depends on synchronized global supply chains, demand forecasting, and product innovation under intense scrutiny. Together, they will unpack the playbooks behind 	executing at global scale and share lessons for COOs navigating speed, coordination, and high-stakes decision-making when the whole world is watching. 

Venkatesh Alagirisamy, Executive Vice President and COO, Nike Inc.
Dan Helfrich, Chief Operating Officer, US Soccer Federation
Moderator: Ruth Umoh, C-Suite and Leadership Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune COO Summit

Game On: The Operational Engine Behind the World Cup

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Let's go. We're the closers. We're gonna end with great energy, um, and really what a great cultural movement. Uh, before we dig into the conversation, quick poll for the audience, how many of you have ever been involved in planning an event, perhaps a wedding, with more than 100 people, let's say. Raise your hand, more than 100 people. All right, that is the bulk of you. Now multiply that by several orders of magnitude and you. Might get a glimpse into what these two operators are grappling with ahead of the World Cup. Uh, Venkatesh, thank you so much. Joining us from Nike and Dan from US Soccer Federation. Such a pleasure to have you. Thanks for having us, Dan. Let me turn to you. FIFA obviously is the organizing body behind the World Cup, but the US Soccer Federation has a critical role in helping this tournament succeed on home soil. After seeing that video, give us a sense of the true operational scale behind your piece of it. Well, the, the first part of the video's operational scale is, can you name the narrator of that video? Did you recognize the voice? Anyone? No. Think Saturday Night Live. It was Marcelo Hernandez, um, from, so that's the first operational thing is you have to bring, um, fun people along the journey with you. Um, look, yes, I, I answered lots of questions about the World Cup, um, for which the responsibility is FIFA's, um, including on ticket prices and things you guys will probably, um, stop me on in the hallway. By the way, if anyone wants tickets to the USParaguay game on June 12th, I have a few, um, so, um. Yeah, so I can, I can help you get them, look, um. What we're focused on is basically two things one, how do we prepare our team. To make a deep run into the World Cup, and that includes getting the best jerseys that have ever been made from Nike. Um, and how, how you outfit the team. So, uh, I'll be taking a red-eye back to be with the team tomorrow as we prepare for the actual match. And the second thing is, how do you help tens of millions of people, probably if we go on a run, hundreds of millions of people to actually experience the World Cup even if they're not in one of the stadiums. And so that means community fests in 400 communities in the country. It means preparing for two matches. We had one yesterday where I came from in Charlotte, where we beat Senegal. We have one against Germany in Chicago this weekend. It means how do we make those accessible. So we offered more than 20,000 tickets at under $50 to those games. Um, we had a huge party in Manhattan last week to reveal our roster. I wasn't invited. Yeah, no, uh, you didn't make the cut. It's sort of, I'll show you my soccer skills, but, but, and that was free. So a lot of the operations is how do you help people experience it. Outside the actual venue, absolutely. Well then, Gatesh, let's look at this at a global level because Nike is operating at a different layer of World Cup complexity. They're outfitting and supporting some 18 federations on a global stage, as you hear Dan described the operational challenge of staging a tournament in the US. What feels familiar from Nike's side? What becomes harder, uh, when the scale is global? Hey, it's such a great question as well. Uh, Dan and I had an opportunity to meet earlier today, and what became very. Evident is just the operator's mindset that cuts across end to end. The first thing that comes to my mind is, uh, think about this in 44, and 4. It takes 4 years of preparation to execute 4 weeks of, uh, World Cup games to leave a lasting impression for the next 4 years. That for us is kind of the way we think about these 3 chapters as to how we want to execute it. But also what's very, very important is, as you mentioned, 18 federations and the amount of innovation that goes into it. But there's one constant theme in all of this, and as Dan mentioned, the constant theme is what we call as the athlete experience. For us athletes, the way we define it inside Nike is anyone who has a body, but it starts with our, uh, performance athletes, our elite athletes that Dan and team support, but all also all our consumers, all our fan base, and we want to make. Sure we leave them with the lasting experience that they remember for the next 4 years. Yeah, I mean, for the both of you, in order to turn strategy into execution, you're coordinating across partners, cities, suppliers, federations, retailers, sponsors, governing bodies. The list goes on. How do you create alignment when success, quite frankly, depends on organizations you don't control? Maybe I'll take this one down and pass it to you, uh. One of the things that Nike has been in existence for more than 54 years at this point, and one of the things that you'll realize about Nike is Nike's value chain is built on partnerships, partnerships every step along the value chain. On one end, we run all our manufacturing through our manufacturing partners, and some of these manufacturing partners have been in business with us for more than 3 decades. In fact, one of the manufacturing partners will be celebrating their 50th anniversary with us. On the other end of the value chain is our marketplace partners whether it's the Dick's Sporting Goods, the Foot Lockers of the world, and the deep partnerships we have. But also an equally important partnership is the partnership that we have in this case with the federations. And that's important context to have because when you think about value chains that partnership, collaborations become natural, and collaboration is a very key to executing something like this at the highest level because not everything will go to the plan. And when things don't go to plan, how do we make sure we're all aligned and how do we make sure we still pull it through at the end becomes a very key aspect of how we work. Dan, anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean, who, who among us doesn't depend on lots of other people to make ourselves look good. I, I retired as the CEO of um Deloitte Consulting, um, last year to take on a passion project and and do this and the recipe of um how, how you seek and trust others to help you is actually pretty similar. Um, even in the very different context of running a huge, um, professional services firm than running a, running, running a federation and, and how you actually partner in operational topics becomes important. We were talking this morning, the creation of our jersey or a kit as proper football people will talk about it is about a 6 year process between Nike and the federation that involves. As you said, supply chain and suppliers, but the design part of the experience was extraordinary how we did it, and it involved putting our players at the center of it. So we actually had two years of focus groups and design sessions with Nike designers and our players, both for the aesthetic look, the, the performance feel, and you know I talked to our players, uh, last night. And all of them says the best feeling and looking jersey they've ever put on their bodies. Now how cool you're looking for an advantage. The margins are very thin on the field as this World Cup comes. You're looking for advantage. That kit, both in its performance field, but also the energy it's giving our players because they like the way they look. It's actually, we, we believe it's a real advantage. No chance that happens without Nike. Inviting us into the collaborative design process, that's a micro mic drop moment, by the way. I don't need to say anything. How cool is that for all of you to hear from Dan and for me especially to hear from Dan. So thank you, Dan. I appreciate you. Let's talk AI because at this scale, even small shifts in demand, supply, or, or even timing can create major ripple or cascading effects. How are you using technology and AI to kind of send some of those shifts earlier to respond faster? Yeah, Dan referred to how some of the designs were done in partnership with athletes. Uh, in addition to that, I would say one other dimension to this design work is many of these jerseys are done with computational design because what we obsess is where should be the airflow zones, how should the airflow vents designed so that it cools the athlete. This World Cup will be the hottest on record. And we wanted to make sure that the 18 federations that play in Nike jerseys have these outsized advantage that helps them perform better on the pitch. So that's an example of where in the design process there's a tremendous amount of computational design that's involved in coming up with the right airflow. But once the design leaves that frame into the actual physical aspect of manufacturing, there's a lot of infusion of technology as well. So in the manufacturing process, how we think about the efficiencies of manufacturing, how do we think about the throughput of the manufacturing as well as the flow of goods in the end to end value chain. I'll summarize it by saying, one frame to think about is, uh, I talked about it as 4 years of work leading up to 4 weeks of uh uh games and leaving 4 years of memorable experiences. Those 4 weeks you can plan as best as you can, but no plan survives fast contact. So I think one of the important aspects of how we think about these things is agility in our value chain or in our supply chain, and that comes from having deeply infused technology and to be able to sense and respond as we execute these games as well. I think so, so I wanna talk about AI from a different context from that and that what I've heard, um, on stage so far today. One of our core operational missions is scouting players around the world, OK. We, we have to find ultimately the 26 players that we just put on the roster. Well, guess what? We have this extraordinary challenge operationally to find all the American eligible teenagers around the world who are playing in any given day. 50 to 70 million people. And boys and boys and girls. And again, we have American eligible players playing in every continent in the world because of eligibility, citizenship, um, requirements. Historically, how do you get your scouts, your humans to all of those places? You can't. And so automatically you're excluding. 99.5% of people, so two things converging at once video becoming much more widely available for youth sports and AI. Suddenly we're reimagining. Well, my view is we can actually scout every single. soccer match that a US eligible player is playing anywhere in the world. Think, think about that paradigm shift. Because I can then train video analysis to say, you know what, our positional profiles for a right wing are looking for these things, and then I can train the AI to find that whether it's one of our players playing in Germany or Boise, Idaho, or for a more traditional power club in New York City. But the thing that's fascinating is you might say, so scouts are irrelevant. Well, but There's other stuff we care about that we can't train AI on yet. What's the tone of voice of a player to a teammate when the teammate makes a mistake? Really hard thing to detect what's the body language when the team goes up or goes down and how does it evolve and so we're in this really interesting moment right now to retrain the way we think about that kind of operation which absolutely will be a humans and machines um context, you know, it's sort of to me a really fun example um that. Uh, in my old job I, I had a lot of examples that weren't as fun. This one is a, is a fun one to relate to. Absolutely. Well, uh, Venkatesh, when I interviewed Elliott Hill, Nike CEO last year, he described innovation as a core capability of the company. Let's take a look at how that comes to life. If we could please roll the video. Reality says the odds are stacked against us. To think our US men's national team can ever raise the world's biggest trophy, be the first soccer team to beat them at football. But here's the thing about us, refusing to accept reality is kind of our thing. Being unrealistic, that's not a flaw. It's a force, it's fuel. Because if you want to be great and make history, never chase the island. Join US soccer insiders today. Be part of the journey. Innovation is not the result of your first try. And the beginning of that process. It's all failure. This region was known for being the best in the footwear industry. This is where we actually learn how to do boots. We really think about our mission as a company to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete around the world. Football is the biggest opportunity we have to do that at scale. But this is the moment where you prove yourself. Wow, when us fans watch the World Cup, we focus on the athletes who's winning, who's losing. For you, behind every jersey, every boot, are as, as you said, years of R&D, of testing, of manufacturing. How do you turn product innovation as something that generally helps athletes perform the world's biggest stage? I know you gave one example just talking about the kids. Can you give us a bit more granularity there? Yeah, for sure. Uh, so first is a cool moment there because when was the last time? Any brand used a marketing media which actually took the cameras into factories, right? So it's really cool moment to see how some of these boots are made. And I think it gives you a bit of a perspective on behind the scenes, what it takes to get some of these boots and kits to the pitch as well. Um, Dan talked about the jerseys and how his athletes feel. Let me give you a bit of a wide-angle perspective on what goes into those jerseys as well. Uh, this is the first time in, in our sport, uh, uh, arena, we have a jersey that is made from a 100% textile to textile recycling. So let me put this in perspective. It is actually textile, textile used textile, uh, used garments that are made into flakes and then manufactured, remanufactured into jerseys. But that's not the only thing that went into this innovation that Dan was talking about. It's actually also the way it's designed. It's a very custom knit and a custom yarn that it actually sits a few, uh, uh, a bit of a distance away from your body, the way that knit is manufactured. That facilitates airflow into the body as well. And combine that with computational design, you suddenly have twice the amount of airflow going into the body, especially as, uh, as you think about the hot climate that we are going to be playing in, and that's what I was talking about as the outsized advantage. We wanted to make sure that the athletes who are wearing these jerseys experience. That's the level of obsession that we put in place as we think about these games. Nike's mission statement for us is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. One way to look at these moments is 4 weeks of high tension-filled activity because we have to land 4 years of work into those 4 weeks. But another way to think about it is these are the moments the culture of Nike is built for. These are the moments teammates at Nike really root for, where they want to see their work come to life and execute at the highest level. So it's an incredible moment for us as a company. And, and meanwhile, my obsession is actually how to make sure this isn't a fleeting moment. Like I, I, we feel a deep responsibility. We are a nonprofit that is charged with growing the game, making the game safe, making the game more affordable and accessible to people in every community in America. How do we use what will be great momentum, including, I believe, because our team's gonna go on a great run? How do we use the resources and the energy that come from that to attract. More philanthropy to what we're trying to do. How do we attract more commercial partners to our mission and how does the legacy of 2026 men's World Cup and Olympics in 2028 and hopefully a Women's World Cup in 2031. Hosted in the US, how does that become a platform for accessibility and affordability for not just the people at the most elite level of the sport, but the tens of millions who play it, um, as 5-year-olds and 75-year-olds, um, because of the power that soccer, um, can bring. Very quickly, let's take one audience question. Does anyone have a question? Raise your hand and we'll bring the mic to you. Any questions from the audience before we wrap things up? Well, let's end with this final question. Let's fast forward to closing day. Final whistle has blown, uh, fans have cleared the stadiums. What does a job well done look like? A truly memorable experience for everyone involved. So that that sets the stage for the next World Cup. The day the job for the next World Cup starts the very day this World Cup finishes, right? And Dan mentioned this as well, 6 years to design jerseys. That's the level of. Obsession that goes into it for me, a really good experience would be fans, athletes, everyone had a tremendous experience and to Dan's point, it's not just about this moment but creates a lasting impression and an experience for everyone involved. Dan, final word, please. Yeah, I mean, when, when I, uh, think about the end and the final whistle, I think about the biggest party and parade in New York that you've ever seen, um, and. And, and, and we, we have, um, we, we have in places that we, um, the team is we, we say be realistic, do the impossible, um, and, um, my view is we're gonna be realistic and do the impossible, and then, um, whether it ends on July 19th for, for our team or, um, you know, a game or two earlier than that. Um, I go back to, um, it's successful for me if I start getting a bunch of calls the week after from people saying. How can I help? I see the power that this game has and um the melting pot of representation of America that our team is. It really is our team is both the men's and the women's team are an extraordinary representation of America and we need more people on the the bus. To help do um great things, uh, in the future. So that's success and you all are invited to the parade and the party including myself who have a seat at the bar finally, finally, uh, Ven Katesh, Dan, thank you for taking us behind the scenes of the world's biggest sporting events. It's really been such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for the.

Salary talk used to be frowned upon; now it’s a conversation that leads labor rights debates and sets new expectations for executives and employees. As governments and regulators push for greater pay transparency, too, companies are being forced to rethink compensation strategies and open their books in ways they never anticipated. The challenge ahead is balancing transparency with organizational governance, while ensuring salary decisions reinforce fairness and trust. This panel brings together a CEO managing that complexity and the creator who helped make salary transparency a mainstream cultural expectation to examine whether openness is a risk or a competitive edge.

Maria Colacurcio, Chief Executive Officer, Syndio 			 
Hannah Williams, Founder and Host, Salary Transparent Street
Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

A Secret No More: Is Salary Becoming Less of a Taboo?

In an always-online world, reputational crises can erupt in real time, often before business leaders have the full picture. This conversation will explore how HR leaders and communications teams can work together to maintain culture and trust when scrutiny is immediate and stakes are high. Our panelists will share insights on how to respond with speed and credibility, with HR managing the internal fallout while PR shapes the external story, and what it takes to keep both tracks aligned when the pressure is on. 		 

Arielle Patrick, Managing Partner, Upland Workshop
Davia Temin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Temin and Company
Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

Executive Crisis Goes Viral: How Can HR & PR Align?

So as a journalist, I love corporate crises because they keep me employed. And they also keep you guys, uh, busy as well, um, and so, but I mean all kidding aside, there are, uh, there really needs to be a lot of rigor in how the crisis is handled and that's why we're glad to have you here. So when a crisis erupts and you have a sense that you're about to get a call. Are you immediately thinking about how HR and PR and IR, what will be each, each, uh, uh, unit's role in helping to quell the crisis, or, you know, how, how do you sort of look at a crisis when one erupts and, uh, and start to strategize? Great question, and I think that's changed over time as more people begin to feel that they know about crisis and that they're experts. It's something where um. A lot of knowledge has gone a very long way. I don't think about those things. The first thing I think about is governance, the board, what is the board thinking about, what is the CEO thinking about, what are the risk areas that nobody has even thought about yet, and then begin to align all of the different issues that you're gonna have to solve for and then a methodology, uh, so it's a, it's not knee jerk. And it's not assuming that you know the answer at that point, because there are all these red herrings out there right now, and you have to be, what, what I say is and what others say it is, is polycrisis. That means that it's not just one crisis, it's many crises agglomerating and they're intersectional, so they, they affect one another. So that's where I start to think about what I start to think about right away. Yeah, mapping it out. And how about you, Ariel? Well, first and foremost, I like to redefine the word crisis in the context of communications and governance. So when I think about crisis, it's really any situation where you have to act with urgency to clarify information that's material to the business. Where there's a risk of stakeholder confusion or loss in loss in trust or even a stakeholder emotion that can span a lot of things. So we're not just talking about me too accounting errors, we're talking M&A transactions that might, you know, perhaps create confusion about the direction of the business. We're talking about. Personnel changes that perhaps um can gravitationally shift the business and might be good, right? but need to be explained so I just like to think that most institutions need to start with broadening sort of the the definition of what requires urgency and what doesn't and actually embedding a culture of preparedness. So there need to be playbooks for pretty much all of these scenarios that exist within the organization, but what I see all the time is, you know, legal, HR, comms, IR work tirelessly with consultants to create these huge playbooks, and then they sit on a shelf for years and no one dusts them off. Um, I recently went back to consulting after being in-house as a CMO and CCO, and I will tell you we dusted those off every single year, and you'd be shocked at how much was incorrect even a year later. Technology systems change, the contact information changes, who's in the working group changes, and you also need to make sure that everyone is trained when they come in the door in those departments to actually know where they live, how to activate, and who should be around the table, so. You know, I'm sort of seeing two things, which is one, crisis isn't always salacious, and then two, it needs to be embedded in the sort of corporate posture. Yeah, I mean, and you're correct, I mean we all love a good scandal of a CEO carrying on with somebody in the broom closet, but you know, uh, there are also crises we saw with Air Canada which I think a lot of people didn't expect. What, what was that about? He, he was didn't learn French, so we'll get to that one in a minute, but. Um, you know, there can also be, uh, you know, Target got pulled into a lot of things, the, the, uh, the big demonstrations in Minneapolis, and, you know, remotely nothing, not their fault, but they got pulled into it. And so sometimes crises come and find you and they're not necessarily of, uh, your own making. So, but the core of it comes from knowing who you are and knowing what your raison d'etre is if you're, if you're an organization. Who you are, who you are in good times, who you are in very bad times, it better be consistent, and every move you make, it better be spawning trust. That means that there's not a divergence between what you say and what you do. And again, I say that this has to be done at the very top of the house and then filtered down, um, because we've all seen, I, there's one crisis, it was uh Drexel a long, long time ago. They had at 1.12 crisis managers working for them. All saying different things. Why would they do that? I think it's because the CEO at that point wanted somebody to confirm his way of doing it, and he would find somebody to do that in the group, shopping, opinion shopping, exactly right. So you wanna stay way away from that and do that work beforehand. Uh, we're not talking about just dusty books, we're talking about things that have to be re. Enforced, redesigned monthly, weekly, sometimes daily, and in a crisis, sometimes hourly. Um, and then I guess one thing too from where where I sit sometimes I'm wondering, you know, what is the most important thing for a company to address. So, um, you know, just over a year ago, Kohl's lost its CEO when it turned out that, uh, well, he was fired, uh, he was sending business to his girlfriend, and, um, and that, you know, Coles's handled it pretty well and quickly and, and, uh, so in a case like that, you know. Uh, when you've had multiple CEOs in the recent in the last few years, you know, you don't want, you're thinking about your share falling, you're thinking about employees being depressed, like, here we go again, another CEO surge, right, um, and trusting the culture. So how do you not nec, you know, don't nec you don't, don't feel like you have to comment on that particular situation, but how do you decide like addressing employees' concerns, investors' concerns, because if your stock is plummeting. That you know, how do you sort of organize the order in which you need to be responding. I actually love the Kohl's case study. Strangely, it's one I know a lot about because my husband was an activist investor in that stock and so it actually explains the larger picture. So this is a company that had come off of two activist campaigns, had lost a very prominent female CEO as part of that process. And had just sort of brought in their savior CEO who then again, you know, was acting sort of in a nefarious way. So there are many things at once. I would say it is natural for a management team in that situation to focus exclusively or at least predominantly on investor perception because that's the biggest vulnerability that they've been dealing with for years and years. I always tell clients start from the inside out. Your employees are your brand ambassadors. They keep your business alive and essentially. Um, rather than focusing on what you want the outside to think, focus one on what's true. I know that sounds very simplistic, but, um, far too often when I'm working with CEOs or, or management teams, they're so focused on the holding statement. What's the holding statement and then what's going in the 80 for investors? First of all, you have 4 days to file an 8K. Let's focus on what we're telling employees first and what information we have and also what information we don't have. It's far more credible to say that you are seeking the information, that you're working on gathering the information, and that you are starting to investigate rather than to pretend that it's wrapped in a bow and something's been dealt with. And often I think that institutions start at the end almost and they are like, well, what do we want the ideal holding statement to look like? And then they work back from there and that's how you get in trouble. Um, so, you know, I would say inside out always a perfect example of a company that does this really well is Gap Inc. Um, I'm a huge fan of Richard Dixon. When he had decided to completely revamp the marketing, um, organization, I loved this. When I went to the investor website, the first thing I saw was he had posted a letter that initially went to employees on the investor website. That is what investors notification was. And so he's literally telling the market I prioritized my internal organization and here's what we shared. So can I add to that a little bit um. So I think that there, there are a million things that are categorized as crisis these days. When I started in this world, the only thing that people talked about was Tylenol, and that's like 30 years old or something, 40, so very old, and if you did what Tylenol did then now. Your CEO would be gone, your board would be gone. Everything would be gone. It would be so old, so. I believe that the thing that makes this the most interesting is there is no one way. There is only, there's not one road to Mecca. There are many roads, and each crisis demands something figuring out the je ne sais quo, what's gone wrong within this organization, and how do we fix it, ideally so that it doesn't blow up and it become a real public, uh, scandal. And there are ways to do that. And in fact, you don't know those because they've worked, but right? Well, we've been trying to find them, but yeah, you've been trying like what happened to the Kroger CEO. But anyway, continue. So, so that, yeah, somebody's behind that in a way that's not nefarious but that is, um, not public. We've gotten so very public about so very much and it's not always truthful. It's not always based on truth. We figured that out over time. So the trick is, I think to be strategic. And that is what boards look for. That's what the great CEOs look for, uh, inquisitive on it, working 25 to 8. And working with a great group of professionals, this you start before it happens. This you start long before it happens, which is why what we do, I'm sure what you do is are longgoing engagements that have just a holding kind of fee, but then we all know who does what when. At one point I worked with an energy company that you know and that you would recognize. One reason that they've not gotten into any public trouble at all is because everything was thought through and it was thought through almost with military precision. Uh, and it was, didn't always work that way, but it did work, um, in the, in the short run quite well and long run. So, yeah, I'm gonna come to you folks for if there are any questions, but, um, uh, so think about it for a second. I have another question for you both is the role of boards here. I mean, you know, not to pick on coal, but, you know, apparently it was an open secret in Dallas that the CEO and this woman were a pair. Um, Air Canada, uh, you know, the board had told the CEO to learn French in 2021, and, uh, five years later you used more French on stage than he did in his apology. His own, that's your pronunciation perfect. I'm, I'm from Montreal, so I'm allowing myself to, to judge here, but, uh. It, it's so this, especially they, these were unnecessary crises, I think if the boards had been on top of, of things and, uh, certainly in our Canada it's like, hey, how's your French coming along, Michael, and it's not so the role of boards and all this, uh, best crisis is one that never happens, right? so. So the role of boards is critical. So now they talk about risk, and risk is obviously underlies crises, and if you're great at identifying and then working the risk out, you've got a very good strategy, but Boards love risk. They love, they can circle that, whereas the crisis is uncircleable sometimes and as it unfolds, it unfolds in real time, a speed and uh that's when you've got to have really experienced people behind you, um. Every board member I know these days who are coming on fresh, they are really wanting to engage with risk. The risk committee is one of the more popular ones. And um, If they don't endorse it, it doesn't happen. So they're, they're for me, they're the first stop. They're thinking about their. Workers, they're thinking about their customers, that's undeniable and that they have to work in there too, so there are many different priorities, there are many different threads that you have to put together into wise action and action that other people will know is wise, yeah. So I spend a lot of my time thinking about board composition, which I actually believe that many in the room, especially if they're CHROs, have some seat at the at the table around because they probably engage with the nominating and governance committee fairly often or the talent, the Human Capital Committee if it exists. Um, one of the things that I think is starting to change, and I also advise clients on, especially startups or pre-IPO companies that are trying to have the best board composition possible, is ensuring that your risk committee is actually comprehensive. So often people, when they think of risk, they're really thinking audit. So it's former CFOs, former CEOs, that's all well and good, but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't hurt to have an AI expert who understands the vulnerabilities of this burgeoning trend. Um, you know, someone perhaps with communications expertise, maybe a former CMO at a big brand who can bring that sensibility to the table, a former lawyer perhaps, um, or current lawyer, and so, um. Making communications, reputation, and all of that ecosystem an embedded part of how you see risk is one of the best ways to make sure that your board is prepared to actually handle these kinds of matters and oversee them properly. Otherwise they're sort of flying a little bit blind. OK, we have time for one question. Can I say one thing? Yes, if you're an AI expert, there is no end to how many boards you can get on. They're all looking for that kind of expertise, deep expertise with great judgment attached to it. Um, so I don't see any questions, so I'll, I'll continue, uh, in our last couple of minutes here, but, uh, has social media Complicated your work. I think I know the answer, but yeah. Hm, yeah, yeah, who would I wonder about that. I feel like there's, you know, I don't want to cover the obvious, which is that in today's day and age everyone isn't is a journalist. They have Twitter, they have Instagram. There's even, you know, people who are part of your workforce that might be influencers in their own little corner of the world that talk about their workplace experience, right? That's neither here nor there. But I think the other piece of digital media, I don't want to only focus on social, back to AI that worries me. Is AI note takers. The amount of times I've seen clients lose privilege because an AI note taker disseminates notes from a confidential meeting to a group of people without a lawyer and a copy, or the AI note taker perhaps is inaccurate and has some issues that need to be scrubbed, or something gets leaked inadvertently. This is one of the biggest risks actually that I'm starting. It's giving me a lot of agita. Um, and so unfortunately, uh, your teams may have to actually type their own notes, God forbid. So the one thing that I think that colors everything right now is disinformation and misinformation. The difference between the two being misinformation is something that could be just a mistake. It could be a wrong take on it. It could be whatever. Maybe it's fixable and addressable, maybe it isn't, but disinformation is insidious. It is everywhere. It's really getting good, so at some point, there's no doubt that we're not gonna be able to tell, you're not gonna be able to tell what the difference between truth and untruth is. And to live in a world that has so little ballast and so little grounding. In, in the best, in what makes us the best, in what makes us the finest, in what makes us good enough. Is a societal danger, yeah, and it's very, uh, very disorienting. So on that note, I mean, I wanted, if we had a couple more minutes, I would have asked you your favorite scandals of all time, but, uh, that'll be for the coffee break, uh, later. So join me in thanking, uh, Dave and Ariel for being here at this point.

Employees worry about AI eliminating jobs, but what if AI agents were focused on reshuffling priorities, absorbing organizational drag and freeing humans up to do better, more meaningful work? In this panel, industry leaders will discuss how top organizations are deploying AI agents not as worker replacements, but to reallocate responsibilities and surface tradeoffs in real time—fundamentally changing what it means to be productive. Together, they will explore what happens when AI agents and human workers operate side by side, and whether this marks the beginning of a broader shift in how organizations are structured, staffed, and led.

Arvind Jain, Founder and CEO, Glean
Hannah Pritchett, Chief People Officer, Anthropic
Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

What Happens When AI Becomes a Colleague?

I actually think this is the perfect moment because I was at a CIO dinner that we hosted at Fortune earlier this month and I had two different CIOs come up to me and talk about how they're redesigning their org charts. They're putting AI agents on their charts, making up names, having titles. They're really integrated, um, so let's start by, you know, give us your elevator pitch, 30 seconds or less. What are you doing at GLA and how does it relate to all this? Yeah, so, so GLEA is an enterprise AI company. Uh, we started about 7 years back, so, uh, actually we're the world's first enterprise generative AI company. Uh, we build a personal assistant and co-worker for every employee of yours. So you can think of our product actually just like Chat GPD or cloud or Co-Pilott, but it's, it's, it's, it's a product that actually knows you as an individual very deeply. It knows your role, your work, things that you need to get done. Um, this week, and then it actually uses all of that knowledge about how you like to work and what help you need to, to bring proactive assistance to you using the power of AI. So, so it's just think of it as a more powerful version of, uh, chat GPT inside your company. Interesting. So if you know your, your agents your AI knows everything and surfaces all this information that knowledge workers can't easily find themselves, what, how then do you advise companies how to best use what you do? Um, what is, what is the role of the human there? What are they doing? Well, I mean, uh, when we started, uh, the company, uh, 7 years back, AI was actually not as powerful as it is today, and so we never really thought about this as anything more than a tool, you know, an assistant. That can actually help us maybe go a little bit faster in the work that we do and and so that's sort of like how we started. So the, the first, the first goal that we wanted to solve for. Um, for every employee is that, well, like, you know, they, they, they struggle to find information. They, they don't know, like, you know, where is that information that they need to do their work. So how, how about you make that easier first? So that's, that's how we got started, of course, over the years it has gotten better. So now it can actually not just find information for you, not just answer questions, but can actually do a lot of your work on your behalf, um, the, but it's still not at a place where. You know, it replaces you, not even close, um, the, and actually my, my view and my opinion is that it's going to be like that for foreseeable future. I don't think AI or actually like, you know, for me like forever, hopefully forever too, but AI never replaces. A human and it just actually augments us enables us, allows us to do, you know, higher quality work, um, and, and, and actually more work like, you know, in the same amount of time so that that's that's, that's where the technology is today like you know there are, there are many who will talk about. Um, that you can replace, you know, this role with AI or that role with AI, but practically, like, you know, we work with the largest enterprises in the world, and we're not seeing any role getting eliminated, not today. Arvin, that you then thank goodness because I, I would like to still be employed. Um, Varvin, you said something that I have heard countless times, which is like we want to use AI, uh, to free humans up for more meaningful work. How many other people have heard that or messaged that to someone at your company? I, I think all of us, but. I guess my question for that is, you know, who decides what is meaningful? What, what is the meaningful work that humans should be doing then? Yeah. I, I, I think right now the stage that we are in and actually most large enterprises, you know, you're yet to actually truly, you know, even get AI deployed in a way where people know what to do with it, um, there's a lot of education that needs to happen, um, within your workforce and so for most enterprises I would say that. Right now the focus is not about answering those advanced questions on like what's fun and what, you know, what's not fun, what should be done by AI, what should be done by humans. Like the number one thing is, can you make people feel comfortable, you know, with AI? Can you actually make them not fear AI? Can they think of it as not as an adversary but rather as an assistant, as a, as a, as a companion, as a, as a colleague of theirs, and, and I think and, and. And there's a lot of work that you need to do to actually even get to that place, uh, because I'll I'll, I'll give you an example like, you know, we work with the largest enterprises in the world and some of the top AI companies are our customers and even at those companies, um, we see only 10% of the people effectively use AI today and totally change like, you know, their day to day work with it and actually move like say 20% faster, 50% faster. Most people actually still using AI. You know, for very, very basic things only, like, for example, if there are questions if they're seeking some information, they'll go to AI and do that because they don't even know like, you know what AI is capable of and how it can help them and, and so that's, that's the, I, I think like right now the immediate focus for, you know, for enterprises, you know, it has to be that how do you. You know, bring that education, um, how do you reskill people? How do you make people aware of what AI can do for them? And a large part of it is actually going to be done by AI, and I can talk more about that. But the, but, but that, that, but that's where we are today, like, you know, like making, I, I think, you know, if AI can come to people like, you know, as, as I was describing before, Glean understands. Everything about you, you know, from, you know, in your work life, like, you know, every, you know, it knows about you, like how you like to read, uh, how you like to write, it knows what work you need to get done this week. So when AI, you know, has that level of understanding about, you know, an individual, then it can actually come to the, to the individual and say that, hey, you had these 10 things that you need to get done. How about I do 5 of those for you right now? And when you sort of flip the table, like, you know, you know, flip the equation like that. As an individual, I don't have to actually now figure out, you know, how to learn AI because AI is coming to me, it's telling me what it can do for me, and that's what drives education. So that's, that's gonna be the like the big new advance this year in our opinion. You'll see all these AI technologies which are very reactive today, um, are gonna start to become more proactive. Yeah, I'm gonna turn to the audience in just one second for questions, but Arvin, one more for you, um, when I was. Just chatting with Ryan Bresso. Well, you know, I brought up the, the issue of AI washing. A lot of leaders right now are using AI kind of as, as the scapegoat for, for layoffs, um, which obviously is creating a lot of fear amongst employees in the workplace. Um, you know, we spoke about it as well, but how are you talking to employees about these fears that they have and what this means for them? How do you advise some of the HR leaders in this room on how to do that? Yeah, you know, what the, one of the common things that you probably hear all the time is that, um, people say that you're not gonna lose your job, you know, because of AI. You're gonna lose it because there's somebody else who could use, who knows how to use AI more than you. So there's always that, like, you know, you can, you know, like you can use that to sort of motivate, you know, your people to sort of just modernize themselves, reskill themselves. Um, the, but, but, but I think, uh, like at a, at a large organization level, um, I do think, you know, that has to be, uh, a good sort of top, top down like messaging on like what is your company's strategy when it comes to. Are you thinking of it as a tool to actually shrink your workforce, um, make everybody more productive, or, like, you know, maybe this other way which is, you know, you're actually thinking about, you know, this as a tool to actually get more things done to build more products and, you know, improve your top line. Um, or, or you can actually say that like, you know, you know, is, is the time for neither today and right now like, you know, all we're focused on is we have a great tool, you know, that's available to us, a great technology. Let's figure out how to make the most out of it, and I think it's a, so it's a, it's a message like, you know, and different companies, you know, um, like are in different sort of, uh, place, you know, uh, and. And, and, and they can choose like, you know, which one of those three messaging sort of like can they want to highlight the most, um, for us like, you know, internally, you know, we are, we are a native gen AI company, um, as I said we started 7 years back and, and we serve like, you know, we are bringing these AI tools to every large enterprise, but if you think about our own workforce, it's the same workforce like yours like, you know, we have folks in marketing in HR. Are in sales and they've all learned and you know learned the same way over the years like they use the same tools and and you know we have the same question too and and like so my answer to our team is is is the same which is that like you know we are growing you know we believe that our like ultimately people the company is nothing more than its people people are the ones that brings. Value, um, you know, and, and, and our business is gonna be proportional to the size of our workforce, so, so there is no interest, you know, that we have internally in terms of figuring out how we can actually shrink, like, you know, we actually want to grow our, our team, and we want everybody to actually, in fact, you know, achieve more, you know, build better products, you know, do more things, you know, because AI is actually helping them, um, uh, achieve more than what they could before it. Absolutely. Any, any questions out here? Oh, we have 22 up front. I see a microphone is coming your way, and if you could say, uh, your name and title and company as well, that would be, that would be great. Hi there, my name is Natalie Seano from FGF Brands. Um, I lead our sorry I lead our organizational effectiveness and talent, um, in a world or I guess we're in a room of, uh, HR leaders, um, how do you keep in mind privacy and data integrity as part of this this is always something that we're always concerned about as HR professionals using AI um how does Glean do that? Uh, to protect data and people's data, yeah, I mean, I, I think this is, this is a great question. AI is actually very good at working with data and information, and, and it can actually, um, really like can answer very sensitive questions using, you know, all the, all the sensitive data in your enterprise. And so you have to make sure that number one, that the way you roll out AI inside your company it's always fully permissions aware, roll aware, uh, it understands the policy and the governance architecture. Nature of your enterprise. So if there's information that is only the HR team is privy to, like, you know, nobody else, you know, should be able to use that information inside the company. So AI should not leak information outside. And that's what Glean does that like, you know, as we connect with all of your enterprise information. Uh, we understand who, you know, who are the different people in your company and who can access what information and we're always restrict, um, the use of information whether it's an agent or an individual based on their identity will restrict, you know, what information they can make use of, uh, but, but I'll also just add one more thing. AI actually does allow you to actually do things, um, which, um, sometimes may be seen, um, not positively, positively by your people. Like, for example, you can. Um, you can do performance management, you know, with AI, like, you know, right now we rely on, um, managers, you know, writing feedback for individuals, and, you know, that's sort of based a little bit on that. Like, you know, just informal sort of understanding of their work, uh, but, uh, with AI, like you can go dig really, really deep, um, you can look at, you know, all the employees' communications and like, you know, the activity they performed, and, and, and so, so there is this question of like, hey, can, can AI, you know, become the big brother, and, and you sort of you, so you have to sort of like, you know, be very careful about, uh, those like what kind of things you do with AI and how do you communicate it to the team. Um, we, I'll, I'll show you one thing, like, you know, in fact, there are a few folks here like from companies who use Glean today, um, and they all use Glean to, uh, to do performance, to actually run their performance cycles, um, and, and, and there was an issue that fear of that like, hey, is this actually going to expose me? Is it like going to be bad for me, but people are realizing that it actually, it helps, helps you actually assess performance. In a more objective fashion and um the uh because you know the manager bias is sort of going away and you're actually working with facts. Yeah, great question. I saw another over here as well. Yes, hi, I'm Sabrina Clark. I'm a managing partner and uh chief people officer at SY Partners and um just thinking about the title of this session of AI really becoming a colleague. And when it um comes to performance management, how are you thinking about the performance management of AI if AI really is a colleague, how do you measure what good looks like? How are you perform how are they being it's um being evaluated? What does feedback look like and are you creating a whole kind of parallel system of performance management, um, for your AI colleagues alongside your human colleagues? Yeah, well, per personally, like, you know, I, I actually don't like this concept of treating AI agents like a human and actually. Uh, evaluating its performance and all that, you know, of course you need to actually make sure that, you know, uh, every agent, like, you know, they're supposed to do some work and they do it with high quality. So evaluation is part of, like, you know, developing that agent, and you do that, you know, and you monitor, monitors performance on a regular basis, but you're not, you're not thinking of it as, uh, I think when you, when you start to equate agents with humans, in my opinion, you kind of are looking backwards. You're trying to retrofit. Uh, you know, this technology in, in the, in sort of this current world of ours, and I, I always think of AI a little bit differently. Uh, it is a coworker, but I actually think of it as a personal coworker or rather an assistant to you as an individual. And so everybody in, you know, in the future is gonna have this really amazing personal, uh, coworker that I was describing, you know, which knows everything about you and can. We help you, uh, do great things, but nobody, nobody manages its performance other than you yourself. You are its manager and, and all the work that you can get done from that agent actually you get credit for it as a human, you know, within the organization. Can I have a follow up, Arvin, on that just, um, because I, I was reading a few media reports recently that were talking about how company AI. Spending is now running so high that human labor is kind of coming back in style and and might be cheaper than the tech that was supposed to augment their jobs. Like have we come full circle here? Yeah, it's kind of like ridiculous, you know, what's happening in the industry today. Uh, see, like I'll, I'll maybe share one thing like again working with many large enterprises. Number one, nobody was actually shrinking headcount for a while. Nobody was actually saying that, hey. Um, like, now I have this tool and I can, you know, get more productivity per person. Therefore I need, like, you know, a smaller team that was very rare, uh, but this year, like as models have gotten expensive and as they actually run for longer time and spend a lot of money now. Like the AI spend has gotten to this level where like where's the money gonna come from and, and nobody is still letting go people but mostly people are shrinking, you know, their future growth plans to make room for this AI budget, uh, but I think it's completely. Um, not sustainable in our opinion. Technology in our world has never was never meant to cost, uh, especially in a developed world, it was never, never meant to cost anywhere close to, like, you know, uh, like cost of, like, you know, hiring, you know, an, an individual, a human, and so, so right now, you know, we have come full circle. The AI cost is too high and it's not justifiable. We're losing some like in the future headcount in some of these companies, but. I would say that like in the next 18 months, you know, it's all gonna, you know, you know, you know, come back to the normal and the normal is where technology is cheap and it's a tool, you know, that our, our workforce will have to actually do innovate work. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Arvin, for joining us. I'm excited to see how it plays out. Thank you. Thank you.

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