The Economics of Enterprise AI: For Buyers and Vendors episode artwork

EPISODE · May 9, 2026 · 24 MIN

The Economics of Enterprise AI: For Buyers and Vendors

from The Josh Bersin Company · host Josh Bersin

We’re now at a stage where enterprise-class AI solutions are real, and suppliers are jockeying for position. Microsoft has consolidated its Copilot efforts into a more integrated offering, and also raised prices. Workday and ServiceNow have defined new consumption-based pricing models which shift from “buying seats” to “buying capacity.” The Frontier model vendors like Anthropic and OpenAI are spending money massively, ready to go public soon, so we’ll understand their business models. And in the meantime both are investing in PE-backed joint ventures to build more engineering and implementation services to speed enterprise adoption. The big story is clear to me: we’re in the early stage of a multi-trillion dollar redesign and reinvention of our companies, employee experiences, and customer experiences – all moving to a model we call “Dynamic Enablement.” Despite this direction, the products are new and immature, so there’s lots of risk-investment to undertake. In this podcast I give HR and IT buyers our experience with AI projects so far, and show you that a focus on near-term use-cases is the best way to proceed. As they say, you can only eat an elephant “one bite at a time.” Just as mainframe transformation took decades, so will AI transformation take time (albeit less time!). So invest wisely and you’ll see tremendously positive ROI quickly. Finally let me offer our help. We’ve already helped dozens of companies build high ROI AI solutions in recruiting, training, enablement, and employee experience. Watch for more in our HR 2030 program to stay in touch. Additional Information (Note that all our research and podcasts are at your fingertips in Galileo) The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents Could Microsoft Win The War For Enterprise AI? ServiceNow Bets Big on Enterprise AI With Vision of Managing Everything The AI vs. Labor Economy, Why Benefits Are Being Cut, The Role of Legacy Systems The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release Chapters (00:00:00) - AI and the Job Market(00:07:43) - The future of IT spending on AI(00:16:29) - The Future of Work and Human Talent

We’re now at a stage where enterprise-class AI solutions are real, and suppliers are jockeying for position. Microsoft has consolidated its Copilot efforts into a more integrated offering, and also raised prices. Workday and ServiceNow have defined new consumption-based pricing models which shift from “buying seats” to “buying capacity.” The Frontier model vendors like Anthropic and OpenAI are spending money massively, ready to go public soon, so we’ll understand their business models. And in the meantime both are investing in PE-backed joint ventures to build more engineering and implementation services to speed enterprise adoption. The big story is clear to me: we’re in the early stage of a multi-trillion dollar redesign and reinvention of our companies, employee experiences, and customer experiences – all moving to a model we call “Dynamic Enablement.” Despite this direction, the products are new and immature, so there’s lots of risk-investment to undertake. In this podcast I give HR and IT buyers our experience with AI projects so far, and show you that a focus on near-term use-cases is the best way to proceed. As they say, you can only eat an elephant “one bite at a time.” Just as mainframe transformation took decades, so will AI transformation take time (albeit less time!). So invest wisely and you’ll see tremendously positive ROI quickly. Finally let me offer our help. We’ve already helped dozens of companies build high ROI AI solutions in recruiting, training, enablement, and employee experience. Watch for more in our HR 2030 program to stay in touch. Additional Information (Note that all our research and podcasts are at your fingertips in Galileo) The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents Could Microsoft Win The War For Enterprise AI? ServiceNow Bets Big on Enterprise AI With Vision of Managing Everything The AI vs. Labor Economy, Why Benefits Are Being Cut, The Role of Legacy Systems The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release

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The Economics of Enterprise AI: For Buyers and Vendors

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This episode was published on May 9, 2026.

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We’re now at a stage where enterprise-class AI solutions are real, and suppliers are jockeying for position. Microsoft has consolidated its Copilot efforts into a more integrated offering, and also raised prices. Workday and ServiceNow have defined...

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