Pinnacle Award Finalist Tom Siebel: ‘We Are Building A World-Class Company’

The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 11, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place live, in-person Nov. 30.

Next is Artificial Intelligence Industry Executive of the Year (Public Company) finalist Tom Siebel, who’s the chairman and CEO of C3 AI. Here, he talks key achievements, primary focus areas going forward, proud career moments and more.

What key achievements did you have in 2021 / 2022?

At C3 AI, my team and I are committed to solving the nation’s most pressing challenges through enterprise AI. C3 AI has developed purpose-driven enterprise AI applications, which help organizations solve priority problems like breakdowns in supply chain logistics or unpredictable aircraft fleet readiness.

Over the past two years, I’ve made serving the U.S. federal government and our military and intelligence agencies a company priority and I’m particularly proud of our work in the defense sector. The Department of Defense uses our applications for predictive maintenance, enhanced modeling and simulation, and to develop a faster and more secure security clearance process, all in support of advancing our nation’s defense and intelligence capabilities.

We’ve worked with the U.S. Air Force to develop an AI-powered application that analyzes equipment health, resulting in reduced downtime for aircraft. And last year, we established a 5-year $500 million agreement with the DOD, accelerating their vital enterprise AI capabilities to counter increasingly capable threats.

C3 AI is also solving challenges beyond defense. We are helping many organizations in the private sector, including Shell, LyondellBasell and Bank of America, to digitally transform efficiently and cost-effectively. And over the past two years, C3 AI’s software has been used extensively by data and research communities to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives. We deployed the C3 AI COVID-19 Data Lake to provide the global research community access to critical data to aid mitigation efforts.

C3 AI also awarded more than $5 million to COVID-19-related research teams through the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute. More so now than ever, public health agencies are under incredible pressure to solve complex, life-threatening problems. Machine learning and enterprise AI capabilities are central to these efforts, and C3 AI is working alongside organizations like the Department of Health and Human Services to support these missions.

What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?

Apart from advancing U.S. defense and intelligence capabilities, C3 AI remains focused on developing products and tools that help organizations in their sustainability goals, which has been a primary objective of the company since day one.

Recently we partnered with the New York Power Authority to develop and deploy a system called New York Energy Manager. More than a thousand organizations in the state of New York, including all major state facilities, are using the system to improve building energy performance, reduce environmental impact and manage energy costs.

We also worked with utility provider Con Edison on a conservation voltage optimization application that reduces the amount of energy required to provide adequate electric service, thereby decreasing energy generation, operating costs and overall CO2 emissions.

In the private sector, we collaborated with Shell to deploy AI across the enterprise to avoid hazards, deliver safer, cleaner, more reliable energy; integrate renewables; and minimize carbon emissions.

What are you most proud of having been a part of in your current organization?

We are building a world-class company, gathering the best talent across industries to establish market leadership while we work to solve some of our nation’s toughest problems through enterprise AI. We’ve spent over a billion dollars over a decade building a cutting-edge enterprise AI platform that is transforming the world’s largest organizations, ranging from Cargill to the U.S. Air Force, and realizing billions of dollars in economic benefit.

You can see C3 AI’s dedication to this vision in the defense and federal sectors alone ⏤ over the past two years, C3 AI continuously committed itself to work alongside our partners and customers to accelerate the nation’s infrastructure into the digital era. In that time, we’ve continued to build a strong leadership team and advisory board that can help us achieve that goal.

I’m proud to lead and serve our customers and partners alongside retired Gen. John E. Hyten, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; retired Lt. Gen. Ed Cardon, former commanding general of the Army Cyber Command; Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn, former assistant secretary of the Navy; and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the 26th national security advisor.

Meet the other Pinnacle Awards finalists here.