Writer AI Leaders forum shows what’s possible with GenAI in the enterprise

Writer AI Leaders forum shows what's possible with GenAI in the enterprise
It’s been another busy week for me. I flew out to San Francisco on Monday to attend the Writer AI Leaders Forum. The main event was on Tuesday where I moderated two panels and had the opportunity to hear about the company’s product roadmap, as well some substantive customer stories, before flying home ridiculously early on Wednesday morning.
What’s interesting about generative AI at the moment is that in spite of the incredible hype and the huge amount of investment being thrown at it, not a lot of companies are finding immediate success, at least in ways they can meaningfully measure. This has led us down into Gartner’s trough of disillusionment.
Consider that an October report from Boston Consulting Group on the state of generative AI in business, called appropriately enough Where’s the value in AI, found that just 26 percent of companies had advanced beyond the proof of concept stage almost two years after the release of ChatGPT. This is in line with a study by Lucidworks, the enterprise search company, from earlier this year that found similar results with just one in four of those surveyed reporting successfully implementing generative AI projects.
In fact, Writer co-founder, CEO and chief GenAI evangelist May Habib – I added that last part, it’s not part of her official title – acknowledged the negativity in her opener. But she was there to combat that narrative and bring in some big guns that are using Writer successfully today to implement generative AI inside large enterprise settings including companies like Uber, Salesforce, Accenture and Franklin-Templeton to name but a few.
It doesn’t hurt that the company is well funded, having just announced a $200 million Series C investment on a $1.9 billion valuation (Note that boldstart is not an investor.) That’s a big deal in today’s investment environment, given that copious amounts cash with larger valuations have become much harder to come by in recent years. Habib feels that the money not only sends a signal to customers that they are in it for the long haul as a company, it allows them the luxury to go after customers who may not be ready to buy right now.
“From a go-to-market perspective, it really allows us to invest ahead of the demand. And you know, we know that we've got a very differentiated approach that is quite hard to copy. And so, from a go-to-market perspective, it means everybody who wants this product, we want them to know who Writer is [even if they’re not quite ready to buy yet].”
When you have large companies like Salesforce, Workday, IBM and Adobe joining traditional venture capital firms for the Series C, it also sends a message to potential customers and helps expand Writer’s market without necessarily having to invest further in sales and marketing to do so because they are getting these large partners to help open doors for them.
There is certainly a lot going on in generative AI in the enterprise – look at Kustomer and CrewAI as examples in the boldstart portfolio – but Writer is helping everyone in the space through their funding, their messaging, their customers and their product road map to show that in spite of the disillusionment we are seeing now in parts of the market, there is still tremendous potential with this technology, and Writer’s founders want their startup to be one of the companies helping others to fulfill that.
-Ron
Photo by Jaimie Soja