Episode 150 - Dale Hopkinson, Senior Product Manager, Cloud Services, Thales

“The value is moving from the metal to the code.” As manufacturers add AI and software to their products, the old one-time hardware sale is running out of runway when it comes to improving AI models for manufacturing. For Thales’s Dale Hopkinson, the real opportunity — and the real risk — sits in how that software and AI actually get monetized: not as a bolted-on price tag, but as a flexible, recurring business built to change as fast as the technology does. In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B Marketing’s Winn Hardin sits down with Hopkinson, Senior Product Manager for Cloud Services at Thales, to unpack why software is decoupling from hardware, what that means for OEMs retasking and repackaging existing equipment, and why Bain projects AI, software, and data will add roughly $70 billion to the market within five years. The conversation covers the organizational groundwork companies need before they can monetize AI — P&L ownership, dedicated staff, and roadmaps that survive personnel changes — plus the shift from subscription tiers to usage-based and hybrid pricing, the operational lift of managing renewals, entitlements, and channel relationships, and why protecting AI models and training data on the edge is now a board-level conversation. https://www.manufacturing-matters.comhttps://www.techb2b.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/manufacturing-matters/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manufacturing_matterspodcast/#manufacturing #automation #manufacturingmatters #techb2bSupport the show