A $5M investment needs to deliver $50M in value!
A $5M investment needs to deliver $50M in value!
Debdas Sen on the ‘Eye on AI’ Podcast
In an interview with former New York Times journalist Craig Smith on the Eye on AI podcast, Debdas Sen cuts through the noise around enterprise AI and brings the focus back to what truly matters – business outcomes. As he puts it, if AI doesn’t deliver ROI, it simply won’t sustain. This next wave of AI will be defined not by experimentation, but by value – where a $5M investment is expected to unlock $50M in impact.
He reframes the starting point for enterprises: the question is no longer “here is my data,” but “here is my business problem.” AI is rapidly moving beyond generating insights to solving core operational challenges, where outcomes matter more than where the data resides.
Debdas also highlights a critical shift in how AI must be built and scaled. It is no longer a standalone capability, it’s an ecosystem play. Organizations cannot afford to ignore legacy systems while chasing agentic futures. Real value lies in making the new work seamlessly with the old, bringing together enterprise data, existing systems, and external intelligence. And at the heart of it all is one non-negotiable: without deep domain context, AI just won’t deliver!