AI Outcomes

KPMG withdrew its flagship agentic AI report after UBS, NHS Greater Manchester, Swiss Federal Railways and Transport for London disputed case studies about them, and researchers found only 5 of its 45 citations matched their sources. Not an AI problem. Not a people problem. A process problem. Ben Pickett is Co-Founder and COO of Swa, a former Global Director of Site Reliability Engineering at Nike...

The biggest SaaS giants are scrambling to survive the AI era. Ben Drakes sits down with Thomas Odenwald, ex-SAP and ex-HPE, to ask the question every enterprise leader is quietly asking: can SaaS survive AI? They unpack how SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and NVIDIA are each making their move, who really owns the new "control plane" for enterprise AI, why business AI still lives or dies on d...

92% of companies are increasing AI investment. 1% of their leaders think they're ready to deploy it. That's the AI readiness gap. And it's about to claim two casualties in enterprise sales. In this solo episode, Ben breaks down the two extinction moments coming for sales teams in 2026. The CRO who buys an AI tool but never embeds the workflow. And the seller who refuses to use the A...

Most boardrooms are buying AI like they're buying a grand piano and announcing they've got a concert hall. They've skipped the hard part: humans don't decide logically–they decide cognitively. In Episode 45 of the AI Outcomes Podcast, Ben Drakes is joined by Virginia (Gini) Holden–the show's first cognitive strategist–to unpack what most AI strategy gets wrong. Our brains...

In this episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast, Rob LoCascio — founder and CEO of URAI and the man who invented live chat on websites in 1997 — shares his contrarian vision for the future of AI. After running LivePerson for 28 years, taking it public, scaling to 3,000 employees and over half a billion in revenue, and landing the #1 spot on Fast Company’s 2022 AI companies list (ahead of OpenAI), Rob w...

Jensen Huang just dropped a 2hr 20min GTC keynote and we've cut it down to what actually matters for enterprise. Ben is joined by Thomas Odenwald (Silicon Valley-based enterprise AI strategist) to react to the biggest moments: Vera Rubin as an AI factory (not just a chip), why every SaaS company is about to become an AgaaS company, OpenClaw's explosive rise as the fastest-growing open so...

The world's biggest banks and tech companies are mandating AI adoption across their workforces. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon and Meta are all reporting hard numbers. And Block just showed us what can happen next — 40% of the workforce gone, dressed up as an AI transformation. This episode covers the stories that aren't making the mainstream AI headlines. Real companies. Real outco...

Join Ben Drakes and Thomas Odenwald (Tech Exec ex-HPE, ex-SAP, Advisor & Podcaster) for a no-BS breakdown of the biggest Musk empire story in 2026:  SpaceX's acquisition of xAI (creating the $1.25T+ XAIX entity) and what it means for Tesla shareholders. As a Tesla investor, Ben shares real opportunities–Robotaxi rollout, Optimus humanoid robots, energy storage synergies–alongside serious...

In this solo episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast (EP 40), I share my unfiltered journey with OpenClaw – the viral open-source autonomous AI agent that's completely changed how I work. This isn't just another chatbot. OpenClaw is proactive, has PhD-level memory, knows my business inside out, and actually takes action: monitoring emails, managing my calendar, handling to-do lists, researchi...

Sales tools have promised magic bullets for years, but are they actually helping sellers close deals, or just creating more noise?  In this episode, I sit down with Nathan Hulcoop, CRO at NedTech and Helm AI, to discuss why most AI sales tools get it wrong and what genuinely moves the needle. We dig into why activity metrics have become vanity measures, the critical difference between automation a...

In this powerhouse episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast, host Ben Drakes sits down with Rickard Hansson, CEO and Co-Founder of Weavy, to explore the biggest shift in software development today: AI-powered coding tools. We dive deep into Claude Code vs Lovable—comparing capabilities, speed, cost savings, and real-world enterprise impact. Discover how developers are building apps faster, distributing...

In Episode 37, host Ben examines the AI bubble debate with tech executive Thomas Odenwald (HPE, Orbit Fab, SAP). They recap Star Cloud's orbital Nvidia H100 launch, discussing space data centers' challenges like heat dissipation, jurisdiction, and launch costs. The core focus: Is AI in a bubble? They analyze inflated valuations, massive capex (e.g., Sam Altman's gigawatt plans), cir...

The first data-center-grade  @NVIDIA H100 just spoke from orbit (and Elon Musk FOMO’d in with a retweet). This is the exclusive first interview with  @starcloud-inc co-founder & CEO Philip Johnston, recorded hours before today’s press release. Philip reveals: - Gemini’s first words + Shakespeare LLM live from orbit - Submerging the H100 motherboard in phase-change wax - Radiation testing at Br...

In this episode, I cover Starcloud's groundbreaking launch of the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into orbit, exploring how space-based data centers could solve AI's massive energy crisis. From heat dissipation innovations to real-world use cases like battlefield monitoring and shipping lane analytics, we break down the challenges, advantages, and future prospects. Plus, insights from industry tit...

Cold, prospecting emails are dead (this is good news btw!). The reps crushing quota right now are using real human video supercharged by AI to get replies when everything else gets ignored. Sati Hillyer, Founder & CEO of OneMob, joins Ben for a no-BS breakdown of exactly how he’s helped thousands of sellers dominate prospecting–and how AI is now making it 10x faster and more effective. In this...

In Episode 34, Sean Williams (Founder & CEO of AutoGenAI) pulls back the curtain on how specialist AI is transforming the RFP and bid management world. You’ll discover: 00:00 Introduction & the $50M+ RFP problem most teams still lose 00:50 Sean’s career journey – from proposal writer to AI founder 01:47 Discovering LLMs in 2022… and launching BEFORE ChatGPT 02:56 Why ChatGPT and generic AI...

Just one hyperscaler outage can erase revenue and trust overnight-let alone two. Episode 32 analyses the October-November 2025 AWS and Azure failures—15-hour DNS crashes, thermal shutdowns, and worldwide fallout—then arms business owners with proven risk mitigation strategies to strengthen resilience now. 🔥 Chapters 00:00 Introduction & Overview 00:38 AWS and Azure Outages: What Happened 01:2...

Will AI take your job—or just the worst parts of it? In this episode, Ben is joined by Alan Back (30 years in sales leadership across public sector, cloud and PE-backed businesses) to unpack what AI really means for jobs, skills, and the future of work. We cut through the doom to look at where automation actually lands, where augmentation is winning, and how to stay on the right side of the change...

In this episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast, Ben Drakes is joined by Matt Armstrong-Barnes, Group AI Practice Director at Servita and former CTO for AI at HPE. Matt breaks down what real enterprise AI adoption looks like—from strategy and governance to compliance and ethical considerations. 00:00 Introduction and Catch-Up 00:24 Guest Introduction: Matt Armstrong 00:38 Matt's Background and Exp...

MIT reports 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail. Why? In this episode of AI Outcomes, Rickard Hansson (CEO of Weavy) returns to unpack the real reasons so many AI initiatives crash and burn—and what to do instead. We break down MIT’s State of AI in Business 2025 report and explore what’s going wrong in enterprise POCs: lack of integration, poor workflows, unclear outcomes, and vendors over-promising...

Welcoming back Thomas Odenwald to the AI Outcomes podcast! In this episode, we cover the breakneck pace of AI development across the globe—including billion-dollar deals, infrastructure arms races, and enterprise breakthroughs. From OpenAI’s $300B Oracle deal to NVIDIA’s 10-gigawatt AI datacenter push, we explore the money, the muscle, and the emerging power struggles. We discuss Meta’s latest sma...

In this episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast, we dive into Part 2 of our special series on how B2B sellers, consultants, and pre-sales professionals can effectively engage customers around AI adoption. If you missed Part 1, make sure to check it out first—it lays the foundation by showing why AI is not just a technology project but a full-scale business transformation program. 00:00 Introduction and...

In Part 1 of this special two-part episode of the AI Outcomes Podcast, Ben Drakes shares practical advice for technology sellers, consultants, and pre-sales specialists looking to engage customers adopting AI at scale. 00:00 Introduction & Purpose of the Episode 01:50 Why AI Adoption is Not a Technology Project 03:41 Real Customer Example: Business Transformation with AI 05:34 Key Lesson: AI i...

Alexis Coticchia and Chris Platt from the HPE Healthcare team join me to break down the real-world AI revolution transforming patient care. We move beyond the hype to explore critical use cases—from remote patient monitoring and preventing hospital readmissions to accelerating genomic sequencing and solving healthcare's massive data challenge. They detail HPE's partnership with NVIDIA to...

Ep24 Alexandra Mousavizadeh, is Co-CEO of Evident Insights and she reveals which financial institutions are winning with AI – and who's at risk of being left behind.  I really enjoyed this conversation and learned so much from Alexandra. It's critical to understand how banking and insurance companies are adopting AI as they front run other market verticals. I have found no comparable res...