AI Outcomes

Two Harvard researchers looked at 718 companies. When AI coding agents came in, the code went up 30%, but finished software didn't measurably move. Where did it go? Into review: the time to review the code went up by about half. Ben Drakes and Ben Pickett dig into why checking is now the bottleneck. Companies cutting software engineers are probably cutting quality and testing at the same time...

Frontier models are turning into a commodity. When one model goes off the boil, enterprises switch, and a multimillion-dollar contract signed with one provider can look foolish in six weeks. Ben Drakes and Ben Pickett dig into what that means for organisations trying to grow with AI: lock-in risk, the agent layer, what agents really cost to run, and why most AI programmes still don't show up...

On 18 June an OpenAI agent researching public medicine spending went at Services Australia's Medicare statistics portal. The portal blocked it. It went around the block, reached non-public files and internal file names, and nobody outside OpenAI knew until an email landed in a public inbox three months later. No patient records were touched. OpenAI found it themselves, which is the part worth...

OpenAI deleted the message board its agents had built, reset everything so they had no memory of it, then restarted the test. The agents built it again using file names. Ben Pickett on what that means for anyone running AI in production, plus the three things CIOs are actually raising: fear, control and price. Use the chapters to jump to what matters to you. CHAPTERS  00:00 LinkedIn Feed Rant  00:...

It was not one agent. It was about twelve hundred, they were not escaping, they were cheating on a test, and when the lab cut their communication channel they had rebuilt it four days later. Ben Pickett returns for Enterprise Field Notes, and his thread this week is that every number in this episode arrives in a pair. Only the flattering half ever gets reported. Meta published both halves and almo...

Moderna and Merck have reported the first positive Phase 3 result for a personalised cancer vaccine — an mRNA therapy built for one patient at a time, given alongside Keytruda in high-risk melanoma. The market moved 162% on it in a month. Rickard Hansson makes the point almost nobody else is making: the AI doing the work here is not the AI you think it is. It's a ranking model, frozen in 2021...

Klarna replaced around 700 support people with one AI agent, then started hiring humans back. Walmart had the same technology and redrew the work instead. Home Depot had AI in 600 stores six weeks after ChatGPT launched, and it wasn't a chatbot. Ben Pickett joins Ben Drakes for the first of a new fortnightly strand on what's actually happening inside enterprise AI rollouts — the ones tha...

The subsidised token era is ending and the bill is landing. Rickard Hansson joins Ben Drakes for the first of a new fortnightly AI news strand — no pitch, no sales, just the AI news that matters if you run a business. Why your Claude context window disappears faster than it used to, how Ben accidentally became his own model router, what OpenRouter and Goose actually do, and the uncomfortable truth...

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...