As firms struggle to generate returns from massive investments in artificial intelligence, Air table is betting that it might help firms finally use AI in critical business processes at scale.
The San Francisco-based company announced latest features Thursday that transform its collaborative app-building platform right into a “true enterprise-class AI platform.”
Additions include App Library, which enables firms to construct standardized AI-powered applications that could be customized across the enterprise, and HyperDB, which enables massive data set integration with over 100 million records.
AI Deployment: Moving beyond chatbots to workflow automation
“There was way an excessive amount of emphasis on pure technology and never nearly enough on ergonomics and the way in which you really use LLMs today,” said Howie Liu, co-founder and CEO of Airtable, in an interview with VentureBeat. He argued that while there may be a fascination with ever-larger AI models, the main focus must shift to using AI in real-world business use cases.
The move positions Airtable to capitalize on growing enterprise interest in generative AI. Goldman Sachs predicts $1 trillion in AI investment of technology firms, corporations and utilities in the approaching years. However, many early AI initiatives didn’t deliver tangible business impact.
“We are at a turning point within the AI era, yet most enterprise AI adoptions still only scratch the surface of the vast potential that might transform digital operations,” the corporate said in its announcement.
Balancing Standardization and Adaptation: The Challenge of Enterprise AI
Airtable says its platform is already utilized by major media, retail and financial services firms to support critical operations. An unnamed “leading streaming company” reportedly saved 280 hours per week on content genre classification by leveraging Airtable-based custom AI solutions.
The latest enterprise offerings aim to strike a balance between standardization and customization – a typical challenge for global firms. The App Library allows central teams to create standardized applications with embedded AI that may then be customized by different business units.
“We give them a Lego set and make the technology really accessible,” Liu said, emphasizing Airtable’s concentrate on empowering business users, not only technical teams.
HyperDB, then again, is designed to make large data sets from systems like Snowflake and Salesforce more accessible to be used in departmental applications while maintaining centralized governance.
Scaling AI: From chat interfaces to parallel processing of 1000’s of tasks
Airtable faces competition from established enterprise software vendors vying to embed AI capabilities, in addition to a variety of AI-native startups. However, Liu believes Airtable's approach to enabling parallel deployment of AI across 1000’s of information sets or workflow steps is nuanced.
“It can be like with the ability to hire 10,000 reasonably smart interns to work on a task overnight and for just five minutes of labor,” he said. “This is a very powerful form factor.”
The moves come as Airtable, which was valued at $11 billion at the top of 2021, navigates a tougher funding environment for tech startups. The company around 250 employees were laid off last 12 months and is reportedly preparing for a possible initial public offering.
Airtable's enterprise push represents a significant inflection point from its roots as an easy-to-use collaborative spreadsheet tool. While the corporate has successfully built a big user base with its grassroots adoption strategy, competition within the enterprise market presents latest challenges. Airtable must reveal that it might handle the complex security, compliance and integration requirements of huge enterprises.
This strategic shift positions Airtable in direct competition with tech giants like Microsoft, SalesforceAnd ServiceNowall of which quickly integrate AI into their offerings. Airtable's success will likely depend upon whether its approach – empowering business users to construct AI-powered applications – can deliver tangible productivity gains more efficiently and cost-effectively than solutions from established vendors.
As firms grapple with easy methods to increase the worth of their AI investments, Airtable's platform could discover a receptive audience. However, the corporate needs to obviously articulate its differentiation and ROI offering to face out in an increasingly crowded marketplace for enterprise AI solutions.
In the top, Airtable's ambitious leap from organizing data to orchestrating AI might just prove that on the planet of enterprise software, the very best solution to think outside the box is to construct it from scratch.
