When Tom Siebel sold Siebel Systems to Oracle in 2006, it amounted to $2 billion in vindication for the savvy businessman. By innovating customer relationship management (CRM) enterprise software, Siebel was able to predict the future of technology, and with his artificial intelligence company C3.ai, he wants to remake the industry again.
As chairman and CEO, the industry veteran is committed to leading the charge of digital transformation, and he is certain that AI will be his catalyst. Now, C3.ai has joined forces with tech titans Adobe and Microsoft to take on the CRM competition, such as Salesforce, by making industry-specific, AI-enabled enterprise software. After four decades in tech, Siebel is far from finished making his mark on the world.
It comes as no surprise that Siebel, author of the book Digital Transformation itself, is confident in his company’s chances to compete in the CRM market against companies he deems “behind the power curve.” Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365, Adobe Experience Cloud, and C3.ai’s industry-specific data and AI models, the resultant AI-driven enterprise CRM is the first of its kind. The software will utilize outside data, such as analyst reports and market data, enhancing its predictive analytics and thus helping companies forecast demand and revenues. The power trio of C3.ai, Adobe, and Microsoft may very well dominate the market.
Moreover, Siebel is benevolent with his enterprise AI technology, at least when it comes to public health. In the wake of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Siebel leveraged his company’s infrastructure and its secret weapon, AI, to create the C3 AI COVID-19 Data Lake, compiling massive amounts of disparate data, making it more understandable and easier to analyze.
Furthermore, Siebel established the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, which is apportioning over $300 million in grants and resources to COVID-19 research projects, in association with Microsoft and operated by two American universities. He is convinced enterprise AI, using data science and digital transformation, will revolutionize healthcare with precision medicine, resulting in better care at lower costs. The pandemic has just compelled Siebel to accelerate his company’s relationship with medical data science.
At 67, Siebel boasts a net worth of $3.6 billion, and with C3.ai filing for its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, he is likely to continue amassing wealth. With technology as powerful as AI at his command, Siebel and his company will continue to make an impact.
