Doubleword's Meryem Arik on Why AI Success Starts With Deployment, Not Demos

From theoretical physics to transforming enterprise AI deployment, Meryem Arik, CEO & Co-founder of Doubleword, shares why most companies are overthinking their AI infrastructure and that adoption can be smoothed over by focusing on deployment flexibility over model sophistication. She also explains why most companies don't need expensive GPUs for LLM deployment and how focusing on business outcomes leads to faster value creation. 

 

The conversation explores everything from navigating regulatory constraints in different regions to building effective go-to-market strategies for AI infrastructure, offering a comprehensive look at both the technical and organizational challenges of enterprise AI adoption.

 

Topics discussed:

 

• Why many enterprises don't need expensive GPUs like H100s for effective LLM deployment, dispelling common misconceptions about hardware requirements.
• How regulatory constraints in different regions create unique challenges for AI adoption.
• The transformation of AI buying processes from product-led to consultative sales, reflecting the complexity of enterprise deployment.
• Why document processing and knowledge management will create more immediate business value than autonomous agents.
• The critical role of change management in AI adoption and why technological capability often outpaces organizational readiness.
• The shift from early experimentation to value-focused implementation across different industries and sectors.
• How to navigate organizational and regulatory bottlenecks that often pose bigger challenges than technical limitations.
• The evolution of AI infrastructure as a product category and its implications for future enterprise buying behavior.
• Managing the balance between model performance and deployment flexibility in enterprise environments. 

 

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Intro Quote:

“We're going to get to a point — and I don't actually, I think it will take longer than we think, so maybe, three to five years — where people will know that this is a product category that they need and it will look a lot more like, “I'm buying a CRM,” as opposed to, “I'm trying to unlock entirely new functionalities for my organization,” as it is at the moment. So that's the way that I think it'll evolve. I actually kind of hope it evolves in that way. I think it'd be good for the industry as a whole for there to be better understanding of what the various categories are and what problems people are actually solving.” 31:02-31:39