Panel, Conference Presentation
Failing to Understand the Exponential (Again) | Elastic, AWS, Nebius & More | RAISE Summit 2026
RAISE SummitAshutosh Kulkarni, Pim de Witte, Julien Lépine, Jeremy Fraenkel, Marc Boroditsky, Dylan Patel
- A fundamental shift in business processes is underway, characterized by an exponential redesign of operations that differs from the previous 20 years of cloud computing, with market expansion outpacing the capacity of incumbents to replace established players immediately.
- The market trajectory is expected to diverge into commoditized workloads and premium segments, creating "remnants" that persist, while CPU usage may surge again as scale becomes a critical factor.
- Enterprise AI adoption is accelerating at a rate 10 times faster than previous technological revolutions, though significant disparity exists where only 22% of companies utilize AI advancedly and 30% possess a structured budgeted strategy, particularly in Europe.
- ROI scrutiny is projected to intensify within six to 12 months as CIOs at major organizations question investments and slow down initial rapid deployments to validate patterns before accelerating.
- Organizational leadership will undergo significant turnover, with AI-native leaders replacing those unable to adapt quickly, potentially causing market share decline in large enterprises like Salesforce.
- Engineering workflows are shifting from code generation to harness development, evaluations, and data feedback loops, with tools like Cursor and Cloud Code becoming essential for engineering teams to remain competitive.
- Software generation will enable rapid learning loops and disrupt industries beyond tech, including robotics, drug discovery, retail, and financial services, moving the sector toward a "bits-to-atom" stage.
- Physical AI and media production face unique challenges; while automation speeds up with accurate context, media tools like Higgs Fields may multiply production capacity rather than eliminate jobs.
- Data readiness is a primary barrier, with companies needing robust context, classification, and knowledge systems to enable complex agents, while pharma is ahead due to existing data structures.
- Security and governance will become increasingly complex, requiring agent identities and zero trust architectures, with the CISO role becoming significantly more difficult due to risks like unauthorized agent access to external data buckets.
- Non-software processes involving supply, HR, and human workflows will change more slowly due to entrenched barriers, creating opportunities for those who can harmonize information across these domains.
- The industry is in the first chapter of a cycle where startups are winning based on verification speed, and major disruptions in text-based and mathematical fields are occurring faster than in robotics.
- Adoption rates will vary based on human comfort and the verifiability of domains, with no consensus on the exact future landscape despite the certainty of a directional shift.