C3 AI CEO Tom Siebel said generative AI is about way more than chat and enterprises are likely to use the technology more for enterprise search. "We're using these large language models to basically crawl the enterprise," he said.
Speaking on the company's fiscal third quarter earnings call, Siebel outlined his take on generative AI as well as the benefits of incorporating it into the C3 AI platform so customers can use it for enterprise search. C3 AI's plan is to integrate large language models and generative free trading transformers into the company's platform.
He said:
“By combining the utility of the C3 AI platform, predictive analysis enterprise search, natural language processing, generative pre-trained transformers and reinforcement learning, we have developed a new and novel technique to fundamentally improve the human computer interface for enterprise applications.
This is kind of a non-obvious use of generative AI. This is not about chat, okay? This is about enterprise search. And we believe that this invention represents a breakthrough development that will dramatically facilitate the ease of use and explainability of enterprise AI applications. In addition to providing users immediate, highly controlled access to potentially the entire body of data and information systems within an enterprise, be it Dow Chemical, the United States Air Force, Shell, whatever it may be.”
Siebel added that C3 AI generative search will be embedded into the C3 platform and applications with general availability this spring. Siebel explained that C3 AI has been working with generative AI models since 2020 due to a request from the Department of Defense, which wanted enterprise search that could answer multiple questions from sources as wide ranging as satellite coverage to supply chain status to diversity goals to slides.
He said generative AI also enables DoD to drill down into data via chat and natural language processing. The key point though is that "the chat universe that you know about is only the information content of the enterprise where it was installed." Siebel said C3 AI's architecture enables it to use new engines as needed.
Siebel acknowledged C3 AI is still working on scoping the monetization opportunity for generative AI but will increase usage of the platform.
C3 AI reported a third quarter net loss of 57 cents a share on revenue of $66.7 million. C3 AI's non-GAAP loss was 6 cents a share. The company projected fourth quarter revenue between $70 million and $72 million and guided toward sales between $264 million and $266 million for fiscal 2023.
Other takeaways:
- C3 AI is currently moving to a consumption-based pricing model with more than 290 qualified pilots in the pipeline.
- Google Cloud has become a key partner with the combined teams pursuing 291 enterprise opportunities for joint solutions.
- AWS and C3 AI are pursuing 75 new deals with six agreements closed in the third quarter.
- Siebel added that C3 AI and Microsoft Azure closed a deal "with a super major U.S. energy company."
