Banking giant Citi believes that Q4 will serve as a turning point for the corporate AI cycle, marking the first measurable impact of enterprise adoption at scale.
In a new CNBC interview, Heath Terry, Citi’s head of technology and communications, says the current AI surge is unlike any previous technology cycle.
“No, I mean there’s never been anything like this. I mean, people make comparisons to 1999. There is no comparison to be made. This is uncharted territory.”
He expands his point by noting that this time appears to be different, as real customers are already driving the AI surge.
“I mean, we always talk about it as having an off-ramp. It’s okay to have circular financing as long as there’s a customer on the other side of it. And right now, the customers are companies like Citi and JPMorgan and Pfizer, Walmart, [Disney] and real companies that are adopting all of this that are finding value in AI.”
The broader effect, he says, is already visible in hyperscaler revenue and backlog figures, with the next step arriving as companies that adopt AI report Q4 results.
“And I think we’re going into this phase as we get into January and you start seeing Q4 numbers, you’re going to see this sort of productivity kind of creeping up, whether it’s revenue per employee, whether it’s margins, as companies take advantage of the fact that they are getting efficiencies out of this, in co-development, in customer service, in white-collar labor automation across really the forefront of things.”
Terry says he expects a number of industries to report AI productivity gains early next year.
“Financial services will be one of the, I think, first places that you see it, but you’ll see it in healthcare, you’ll see it in retail, you’ll certainly see it in sort of energy and industrials, where companies, not all companies, but most companies are really trying to adopt this to take advantage of it.”
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