IBM CEO on Enterprise AI and Software Strategy

“As code becomes more and more commoditized and easier to produce, the value is moving up the stack to what you would call design,” Kris Rasmussen, chief architect at Figma, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, the pair discuss how AI agents are changing design and software development, why agents may become the glue connecting different interfaces rather than replacing them and how Figma’s canvas and design systems provide the context teams need to move from prompt to prototype to production. Rasmussen explains how Figma is combining frontier and first-party models while using its design data and customer workflows to improve agent performance, reinforcing the importance of human taste, judgment and collaboration as code becomes easier to generate.

“In three years from now, 80% of all enterprise token usage will be on open weight or a model that the enterprise chooses where it runs,” Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana in this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast. The pair also discuss where enterprises are in AI adoption, why unlocking data across systems is critical to scaling agents and how AI could reshape software, application modernization and technology services. Krishna predicts enterprise technology spending will likely double over the next five to 10 years as a percentage of revenue from roughly 5-6% today, as AI drives greater spending on agents, applications, data and workflow modernization.

As autonomous AI agents proliferate across enterprises, keeping track of assets, identities and access is becoming a bigger cybersecurity challenge. Axonius CEO Joe Diamond joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s analyst Mandeep Singh to discuss how agentic AI is expanding the attack surface through nonhuman identities and broader access to data and applications. They examine the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident and why continuous asset visibility, identity controls and real-time monitoring will become increasingly critical as AI agents scale.

AI is moving beyond software and into the physical operations that power industries like energy, manufacturing, logistics and aerospace. Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how the company is using AI to reduce downtime, improve efficiency and support operating decisions. The conversation also explores physical AI and robotics, the shift from prediction toward autonomous action, customer deployments, market potential and how Avathon plans to scale over the next five years.

“There is a national imperative to win across all those lines of effort,” says retired Adm.Chris Grady, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Grady joins Bloomberg Intelligence senior defense weapons analyst Wayne Sanders on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss quantum capabilities, including sensing, computing and magnetometry. The conversation also covers nuclear-power generation for contested logistics, robotics and advanced manufacturing for the next generation of warfare and the private-capital partnerships needed to support the ecosystem.

“I think one of the things that people have gotten wrong, especially Wall Street, is that they confused intelligence with execution,” Bhavin Shah, Senior Vice President of the Employee Experience Group at ServiceNow and co-founder of Moveworks, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode, they discuss how ServiceNow is turning EmployeeWorks into an enterprise front door, with universal and specialized assistants orchestrating work across HR, IT, CRM, ERP and other systems rather than simply generating answers. Shah explains how combining probabilistic AI with deterministic workflows, flexible model selection and enterprise controls can deliver durable ROI through self-service while providing the secure execution layer agents need to operate at scale.

AI agents are rapidly reshaping product discovery and shopping, but earning consumer trust in payments is a critical barrier to fully autonomous commerce. In this episode of Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tech Disruptors podcast, Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, joins BI fintech and payments analyst Diksha Gera to discuss what needs to be solved before agentic commerce can move from product discovery to transactions at scale. They explore how merchants distinguish legitimate agents from bots, how consumers set and verify an agent’s authority to spend, who carries liability when an autonomous transaction goes wrong and whether emerging payment and checkout protocols can work together. The discussion examines why solving identity, intent, control and accountability could determine how quickly AI agents graduate from shopping assistants to economic actors, and how that shift could affect merchant conversion, pricing and loyalty.

“Ultimately it comes down to the simple question of how do you leverage AI to transform and rethink your business in an AI world vs. just applying AI to what you already do today,” Bruce Ross, group head of artificial intelligence at Royal Bank of Canada, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analysts Paul Gulberg and Anurag Rana. In this episode, the group discusses how RBC’s decade-long investment in proprietary models, data infrastructure and AI talent is translating into measurable returns across credit, software development, fraud prevention and client engagement. Ross explains how intelligent model routing, more than 50,000 internal agents and a growing ability to build capabilities in-house are reshaping RBC’s technology stack while preserving the controls and trust required in banking. 

Cornelis Networks is bringing its high-performance computing heritage into AI as larger clusters put growing pressure on the network connecting accelerators. The company, which has its roots in Intel’s former Omni-Path business, is expanding from scale-out into scale-up networking with its Active Compute Fabric. CEO Lisa Spelman joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss why bandwidth alone may not solve AI infrastructure bottlenecks, the move from 400G to 800G and 1.6T, how networking can improve token economics, and how Cornelis sees its position evolving alongside Ethernet, InfiniBand and increasingly integrated AI systems.

Just how big a threat is AI to software-as-a-service providers, and what changes will it bring to the broader industry? Silver Lake Managing Partner Joe Osnoss sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mandeep Singh to discuss the “SaaSpocalypse” and the firm’s exposure to AI, data centers and other major technology themes. The conversation also explores how AI is reshaping software business models, competitive positioning and margin profiles of Silver Lake’s portfolio companies. Osnoss shares his perspective on where long-term value may emerge amid a shift in the technology stack.