“A year ago, it was like, oh my God, it’s going to change everything,” Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, recently told me. “Now, they’re less optimistic about it changing their industry.”
Autodesk formed in 1982 for the launch of AutoCAD, which transformed architecture’s reliance on hand-drawn images to computer-aided design. But today, the architecture, engineering and construction industry spends less than a third of what the manufacturing sector spends on technology.
So a key part of Anagnost’s strategy is to be an AI evangelist, preaching the use-cases and joy to customers. That includes trying to inspire people on the front lines with a vision of how much more “interesting, fulfilling and exciting” their work can now be.
“It’s not just people sitting in a dark room, building three models on computers in dark mode. People on the construction site and inside the factory are working differently, planning differently,” he said.
