Applied AI by The Information Staff

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Applied AI

By The Information Staff

Applied AI focuses on deep storytelling and reporting around the application of AI in business and beyond. From how companies drive innovation, support their customers, and foster collaboration with their teams, to how CEOs are applying AI to optimize their organizations.

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Recent Editions

HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan. Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images

Facing a Revolt, HubSpot Reverses Decision to Use Customer Data For AI Feature

By Kevin McLaughlin · Jul 7, 2026 1:08pm PDT · 1 comment

HubSpot last week triggered a firestorm among customers after announcing a plan to use some of the data they store with HubSpot’s customer relationship management app to power a forthcoming AI-powered feature.While HubSpot reversed course four days later, the episode shows how sensitive customers are to software firms using their data in the AI... HubSpot last week triggered a firestorm among customers after announcing a plan to use some of...

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images.

Palantir CEO Says Some U.S. Government Customers Switched to Open Source AI

By Laura Bratton and Phoebe Liu · Jul 2, 2026 12:31pm PDT

Like other software leaders these days, Palantir CEO Alex Karp is on a mission to convince businesses they need a trusted intermediary between their wallets and Anthropic or OpenAI, rather than dealing directly with the two AI firms.I spoke to Karp shortly after his fiery appearance on CNBC, where he appeared to accuse OpenAI and Anthropic of... Like other software leaders these days, Palantir CEO Alex Karp is on a mission to convince...

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Anthropic Preps Claude Agent in Microsoft Teams

By Laura Bratton, Aaron Holmes and Amir Efrati · Jun 30, 2026 11:22am PDT

Salesforce and Microsoft may be worried about threats posed by AI upstarts like Anthropic to their core enterprise apps, but they’re taking a conciliatory approach.Even though the two incumbents sell proprietary AI agents that can be used inside their Slack and Teams messaging apps, for instance, they’ve decided the apps ought to be a “platform”... Salesforce and Microsoft may be worried about threats posed by AI upstarts like Anthropic to...

Getty Images

Anthropic Customers Find Errant Charges, Auditing Startup Says

By Laura Bratton · Jun 25, 2026 12:31pm PDT

Getty Images

Anthropic Customers Find Errant Charges, Auditing Startup Says

By Laura Bratton · Jun 25, 2026 12:31pm PDT

Some customers may be paying more for Anthropic and OpenAI products than they should be due to billing inaccuracies, according to data from Vaudit, which sells an AI bill-auditing tool.Between March and June, Vaudit audited bills sent to 60 companies totaling $34 million, mostly for usage of Anthropic’s Claude Code, and found about $1.7 million... Some customers may be paying more for Anthropic and OpenAI products than they should be due to...

Vipul Ved Prakash. Photo by Big Event Media/Getty Images

Open Source Growth Boosts Together AI, Hugging Face

By Julia Hornstein, Laura Bratton and Kevin McLaughlin · Jun 23, 2026 11:09am PDT

Anthropic and OpenAI are booming, but so are providers of open-source AI models and other cheaper alternatives, thanks to businesses using open-source to control their costs, we reported in detail this morning. But there’s more.Together AI, the neocloud which rents out Nvidia cloud servers and access to open source models, raised its annual ... Anthropic and OpenAI are booming, but so are providers of open-source AI models and other cheaper...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (left) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (right). Getty Images.

Google and Microsoft Team Up to Beat Back Anthropic and OpenAI

By Amir Efrati, Aaron Holmes and Catherine Perloff · Jun 18, 2026 10:30am PDT

When a group of tech companies announce an agreement to support an AI backend-software protocol, we don’t blame corporate IT executives for not paying attention. It sounds quite boring.But one such announcement on Wednesday from Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Snowflake, ServiceNow and others is worth paying attention to. It demonstrates one way... When a group of tech companies announce an agreement to support an AI backend-software protocol,...

Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images

AT&T Throttles Some Employees’ AI Usage as ‘Tokenminimizing’ Arrives

By Laura Bratton and Aaron Holmes · Jun 16, 2026 12:13pm PDT · 1 comment

As AI spending has eaten into corporate budgets, generating concern over rising costs at Fortune 500 firms from Uber to ServiceNow and Snowflake, some companies are beginning to throttle employees’ usage. The latest is AT&T, which has begun limiting some employees’ access to Microsoft’s Github Copilot, according to a person at the... As AI spending has eaten into corporate budgets, generating concern over rising costs at Fortune...

Anahita Tafvizi, chief data and AI officer at Snowflake. Photo courtesy of Snowflake

Snowflake Mounts Full-Court Press to Get Employees Using AI

By Kevin McLaughlin · Jun 11, 2026 11:47am PDT · 2 comments

Anahita Tafvizi, chief data and AI officer at Snowflake. Photo courtesy of Snowflake

Snowflake Mounts Full-Court Press to Get Employees Using AI

By Kevin McLaughlin · Jun 11, 2026 11:47am PDT · 2 comments

When Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and CFO Brian Robins face Wall Street analysts on quarterly earnings calls nowadays, they’re armed with material from an internally developed AI agent. The agent tells the two executives the questions they’re expecting the analysts to ask and provides suggested answers.The agent prepares that material in... When Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and CFO Brian Robins face Wall Street analysts on quarterly...

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Palantir CEO Pounces On Anthropic Spending Backlash

By Laura Bratton · Jun 9, 2026 10:35am PDT

Software companies and their shareholders have watched the recent growth of Anthropic and OpenAI with unease. But the mood is shifting as customers complain about AI costs, and the old guard smells blood in the water. Last week, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his lieutenants told his customers at an event outside San Francisco that they’re... Software companies and their shareholders have watched the recent growth of Anthropic and OpenAI...

Mike Blandina, Chief Information Officer at Snowflake. Screenshot via YouTube and Money20/20 TV.

Snowflake CIO Says He Used Layoffs to Convince Staff to Use AI

By Laura Bratton and Aaron Holmes · Jun 4, 2026 10:30am PDT

Tech firms ranging from Block to Meta Platforms have announced mass layoffs in the past year, frequently citing AI as allowing them to do more with less people. In a variation on that approach Snowflake says it used layoffs to force software engineers to use AI tools and become more productive.“At the time, my team hated me, but I thought it was... Tech firms ranging from Block to Meta Platforms have announced mass layoffs in the past year,...

Art by Clark Miller.

5 Ways Companies Keep AI Bills in Check

By Aaron Holmes and Laura Bratton · Jun 2, 2026 10:31am PDT

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on Monday became the latest executive to voice concerns over rising AI costs.“Are we worried about how much we are spending on AI inference across our internal teams? Absolutely,” he told my colleague Laura during Snowflake’s annual conference in San Francisco. (Snowflake is a major customer of Anthropic, OpenAI... Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on Monday became the latest executive to voice concerns over...

Lowe's Senior Vice President Chandhu Nair. Photo courtesy of Lowe's

Lowe’s Says ‘Semantic’ Data is Boosting Its AI Agents

By Kevin McLaughlin · May 28, 2026 1:09pm PDT

Lowe's Senior Vice President Chandhu Nair. Photo courtesy of Lowe's

Lowe’s Says ‘Semantic’ Data is Boosting Its AI Agents

By Kevin McLaughlin · May 28, 2026 1:09pm PDT

Microsoft, Databricks, SAP and other AI software providers are fighting over control and access to enterprise data known as the semantic layer, as we reported last week. Semantic layers are essentially a data management tool that companies use to standardize definitions for their business metrics, such as revenue and customers, and are now... Microsoft, Databricks, SAP and other AI software providers are fighting over control and access...

Uber CEO Andrew Macdonald. Photo by Zed Jameson/ Getty Images

Uber COO Says AI Lacks ROI

By Kevin McLaughlin · May 26, 2026 1:01pm PDT · 1 comment

Many corporate leaders say they’re getting value from AI as their spending on it skyrockets, but hype is outpacing reality in plenty of cases.On a podcast over the weekend, for instance, Uber Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald said the ride-hailing company isn’t seeing a clear increase in productivity from using AI coding services despite... Many corporate leaders say they’re getting value from AI as their spending on it skyrockets, but...

Art via Shutterstock

AI Customers Negotiate a SaaS Escape Hatch

By Laura Bratton and Aaron Holmes · May 21, 2026 11:47am PDT

Businesses used to feel locked in to their enterprise software providers, but some now say they can cut and run if they need to.Companies such as insurer National Life Group, for instance, have negotiated “opt out” provisions that let them exit their software contracts or reduce their subscriptions, even in the middle of a contract term, if the... Businesses used to feel locked in to their enterprise software providers, but some now say they...

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

By Aaron Holmes and Jyoti Mann · May 19, 2026 10:30am PDT

Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot may have lost much of its early lead in the AI coding race to rivals like Anthropic and Cursor, but Microsoft thinks it has an advantage over those companies: roughly 100,000 software engineers who work for Microsoft. As we reported Monday, Microsoft leaders think they can develop coding models using the wealth of... Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot may have lost much of its early lead in the AI coding race to rivals...

Art by Clark Miller.

Why Anthropic Costs Are Unpredictable

By Laura Bratton · May 14, 2026 12:08pm PDT · 3 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

Why Anthropic Costs Are Unpredictable

By Laura Bratton · May 14, 2026 12:08pm PDT · 3 comments

Anthropic customers are already feeling pinched by the company’s AI price hikes, Aaron and I reported Wednesday. Making matters harder, Anthropic customers like PagerDuty and ServiceNow—which says it already blew through its full-year budget for Anthropic AI tools—can’t predict what they’ll pay this year.One reason Anthropic costs are tough to... Anthropic customers are already feeling pinched by the company’s AI price hikes, Aaron and I...

Getty Images.

ServiceNow and FedEx Reflect the Great AI Pricing Divide

By Laura Bratton · May 12, 2026 12:45pm PDT

Software companies such as HubSpot and Adobe have started pricing their AI tools based on the number of tasks the AI successfully completes rather than based on flat fees or the number of AI tokens they consume. Many more firms plan to follow suit, even as the practice is still being hotly debated.Some 31% of 230 enterprise software firms... Software companies such as HubSpot and Adobe have started pricing their AI tools based on the...

Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri. Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Microsoft Cuts Copilot Bloat

By Aaron Holmes · May 7, 2026 10:30am PDT

After Microsoft bought the rights to use OpenAI’s technology for free, Microsoft developed a case of Copilot fever, launching Copilot-branded AI features in dozens of products, from Office and Bing to PowerBI and Dynamics. Microsoft appears to be dialing it back a bit, seemingly in response to complaints from customers that the Copilots are... After Microsoft bought the rights to use OpenAI’s technology for free, Microsoft developed a case...

Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow. Photo by Bridget Bennett/Getty Images

ServiceNow Is Putting Up a New Tollgate for AI Agents

By Laura Bratton · May 5, 2026 1:25pm PDT

The number of software tollgates is expanding.ServiceNow on Monday joined firms such as HubSpot and Workday in detailing plans to charge customers that use AI agents to tap data in its apps. During its financial analyst day in Las Vegas, the company unveiled “Action Fabric”, a new layer—effectively a tollgate—that AI agents will have to go... The number of software tollgates is expanding.ServiceNow on Monday joined firms such as HubSpot...

Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft. Photo by Chona Kasinger/Getty Images

Microsoft Pushes Usage-Based Pricing as AI Eats into Cloud Margins

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Apr 30, 2026 11:59am PDT

Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft. Photo by Chona Kasinger/Getty Images

Microsoft Pushes Usage-Based Pricing as AI Eats into Cloud Margins

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Apr 30, 2026 11:59am PDT

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday that a lot more people were heavily using the company’s AI-powered applications. But his company’s first quarter financial results showed the usage was dragging down profit margins in its cloud unit, prompting Microsoft to effectively boost prices. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday that a lot more people were heavily using the company’...