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Enterprise tech leaders convened Monday at the aptly titled Convene venue in midtown Manhattan to talk about AI and participate in so-called Brain Dates (opportunities to pick each other’s brains). The event was Reuters Momentum AI. The coffee was strong, the conversations were insightful and even though the only “up” escalator was out of service, vibes remained high for the stair-climbing attendees.
While phrases like “early days,” “ROI,” and the dreaded “agentic,” hung in the air, WSJ enterprise tech reporter Isabelle Bousquette went on a few brain dates of her own. Here’s what she learned:
At Kellanova, computer vision can tell how taste testers really feel about that new Pop-Tarts flavor. The company formerly known as Kellogg has always relied on written and verbal feedback on new products from taste-testers. Now it thinks it found a better way to gauge taste-tester response with a new computer vision tool it built in house. “That tool can actually sense eight different emotions and tell whether your consumer, your test user, is actually enjoying or not.” said Ramesh Kollepara, global chief technology officer at Kellanova.
Citi doesn’t want every software vendor building yet another chatbot. Jonathan Lofthouse, chief information officer at Citi, said that having a different chatbot experience on every different enterprise app could be a recipe for an awful user experience – and yet that’s the direction many vendors are going. “We can't stop them. But we can stop them rolling it out at Citi,” he said of the chatbot add-ons. Instead, Lofthouse said he’s opting to work with vendor APIs to build one master tool that will answer employee questions, pulling information from across apps.
Marriott’s “chief revenue and technology officer” has a unique perspective on tech ROI. “I think I’m a unicorn,” Drew Pinto said about his unique role overseeing both revenue and technology at Marriott International. Pinto said that as the company makes new tech investments, he’s focused on hard metrics like employee turnover and the amount of time it takes guests to check in, as well as intangible ones. A seamless technology experience makes Marriott more attractive to property developers looking for a hospitality franchise to partner with, he said.
General Mills wants customers to get their own personalized AI ads. General Mills is currently trialing AI-generated ads that could one day deliver uniquely personalized ads to consumers at scale, said Jaime Montemayor, chief digital & technology officer. “Let's say an athlete is hungry after an activity. If they go on social media, you would like for our brands to show protein, fiber, energy. Personalizing content at scale in a relevant manner is an area of opportunity we are focusing on,” he said.
NRG Energy says it can now take five years to buy a data center generator. The Houston-based energy company said that there can now be a gap of five years between purchasing a generator – a critical data center component – and receiving it, thanks to supply chain constraints. Tariffs could make that even longer, said Kim Hales, NRG chief data and AI officer. “There's only so many companies that make generators,” Hales said. “We're definitely seeing a tightening of that supply chain.”
Goldman Sachs is teaching its coders to become “agent managers.” Even employees who have never been managers before will one day have one or several direct reports – in the form of AI agents, said Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti. As a result they need to learn three basic management skills, he said: delegating, explaining problems and verifying outputs. “Those things are management table stakes," he said. The good news? They have time. “If AI is early or young, then agents are just born,” he said.
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