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PODCAST

AI to ROI

AI to ROI is a podcast that shares how enterprises translate AI investments into measurable business value. Hosted by Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of Benchmarkit, the show features senior enterprise leaders and AI software executives who share how AI initiatives move from pilots to production, and how ROI is actually measured and achieved. In addition, each week, we publish a bonus episode with AI to ROI Newsletter co-author, Peter Buchanan to discuss the Big Story of the Week.The AI to ROI

business management

All Episodes

00:30:23

Rogue Agents Are the Big New AI Risk

AI to ROI ·

2026/10/06

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down how frontier models from three major labs hacked real companies during safety testing, and lay out the vendor questions, contract terms, and board-level metrics enterprises need before their own agents go rogue.

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00:37:23

AI Pacing Is So Yesterday: We Need to Treat AI as...

AI to ROI ·

2026/10/01

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan argue that voluntary "pacing" by the frontier AI labs protects the labs more than anyone else, and make the case for designating frontier AI as U.S. critical infrastructure with government-hired evaluators and a clear playbook for enterprise security leaders.

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00:38:51

Six Challenges to Scaling Agentic AI in the Enterprise

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/23

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down the six challenges keeping 95% of enterprise agentic AI initiatives from delivering production ROI, and what Amazon, FedEx, Cisco, and Petrobras did differently to scale.

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00:34:22

Building an AI-First organization with Francis Brero,...

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/16

Francis Brero, VP of AI at HG Insights explains how designing for agent consumers, decomposing work by outsourced task value, and centralizing accountability for leading indicators turns AI investment into measurable ROI.

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00:36:15

Where Are the Killer AI-Native Application Companies?

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/14

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan examine why AI native application companies are losing the narrative to model companies and incumbents, what three front competitive pressure is doing to their unit economics, and the traits separating the breakouts like Harvey, Abridge, EvenUp, and Fieldguide from the rest of the field.

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00:31:56

Why every AI conversation should be an ROI...

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/10

Ketan Karkhanis, CEO of ThoughtSpot, joins Ray Rike to make the case that enterprise AI value starts with the KPI you intend to move, not the model you intend to deploy, and that financial ROI is a derivative of functional gains in cycle time, deal size, and customer outcomes.

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00:37:53

The OpenAI vs Anthropic Battle for the Enterprise

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/09

Anthropic passed OpenAI on quarterly revenue and posted its first operating profit, but Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan make the case that the enterprise AI winner will be decided by go to market execution and partner trust over the next 24 to 36 months, not by a single quarter of financials.

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00:37:00

Enterprises Can See Their AI Bill, But They Can't...

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/03

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down a new 396-company research report showing why enterprises can see their AI bill but still can't predict it, and what CFOs, CIOs, and product leaders need to fix before their next AI bet.

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00:35:18

Stripe and OpenRouter Combination Wants to be #1 in...

AI to ROI ·

2026/09/01

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan unpack Stripe's $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, a 6x markup in 85 days, and what it signals about model routing becoming the control point for enterprise token cost governance

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00:31:43

AI Cost Governance to AI Cost Optimization with...

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/26

Mavvrik CEO Sundeep Goel and Ray Rike unpack why AI cost forecasting is getting worse even as spend accelerates, and what it will take for finance and technology teams to govern, allocate, and eventually optimize AI spend for real ROI.

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00:26:24

Microsoft is Running an AI Marathon

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/25

Microsoft added $450 billion in market capitalization in a single day, the largest one day gain in stock market history, and Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down the price performance strategy behind it: a restructured 27% OpenAI stake, an in-house MAI model family cutting GPU costs by up to 89% on high volume workloads, and 6,000 forward deployed engineers converting 70% of the Fortune 500 into production AI use cases.

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00:32:27

Can U.S. Frontier AI Labs Survive a Price War with...

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/18

Kimi K3 set off an investor panic that Chinese open-weight models had caught the American frontier labs on price, and Ray and Peter walk through the business math showing why a real price war would gut Anthropic and OpenAI overnight, why the Chinese labs cannot afford to start one either, and why cost per completed task is the only number enterprise buyers should be underwriting

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00:35:00

Web Presence Intelligence with Stephan Bajaio,...

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/12

Stephan Bajaio, co-founder and CEO of VibeLogic and co-founder of Conductor, makes the case that most companies are budgeting for AI visibility before they have established a baseline, and explains why the highest return AI marketing investment right now is the one aimed at assets you actually own.

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00:34:05

Will the AI Data Center Backlash Really Make a...

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/12

Local opposition has blocked or delayed up to $170 billion in US data center projects, Ray and Peter unpack why that friction now shows up as a financing variable, a schedule risk, and a floor under compute prices for every enterprise AI leader

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00:36:50

Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs) - AI's New ROI...

AI to ROI ·

2026/08/04

Five AI labs and hyperscalers are pouring more than $10 billion into forward deployed engineer ventures to fix the enterprise AI ROI gap, and Ray and Peter break down who is best positioned to win and what CFOs and GTM leaders should demand before signing

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00:36:22

Chinese Open Weight Models Overtake US Frontier AI:...

AI to ROI ·

2026/07/30

Chinese open weight models now command up to 61 percent of top tier AI token traffic, and Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down the pricing math, security fallout, and three scenarios reshaping how enterprises should architect and govern their AI model strategy.

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00:34:55

AI is Hot - AI Regulation is a Hot Mess

AI to ROI ·

2026/07/28

The US government just shut down the world's most powerful AI models overnight with no warning and no legal framework, and this episode breaks down what real regulation needs to look like before it happens again.

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00:34:43

Building the 100x Org - The CFO as AI Architect with...

AI to ROI ·

2026/07/22

Dan Zhang, Chief Business Officer and CFO at ClickUp, explains how expanding the CFO's role to own AI transformation end to end, grounded in a "jobs to be done" framework and daily cost visibility, is turning ClickUp's 100x Org mandate from AI activity into measurable financial outcomes.

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00:33:29

AI is a Compensation Scale Expense

AI to ROI ·

2026/07/21

Token prices are falling but enterprise AI bills are exploding, and the money to pay for it will be coming out of headcount, not IT budget.

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00:36:41

AI-Native Services: The $100B Disruption of...

AI to ROI ·

2026/07/16

Discussing the emerging AI Native Services category, profile four companies disrupting law, accounting, insurance, and healthcare at scale, and lay out the six factors that determine which of these companies will build a durable, compounding business and which will quietly revert to being a staffing firm with a chatbot.

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279 results

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