When it comes to building an effective AI stack, context is king and power isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. “Smaller, smarter, safer — this is a bet our company has taken in how we deploy AI internally,” said Ricky Thakrar, head of sales and account management at Zoho, provider of a suite of popular cloud-based software solutions for sales, marketing, and finance. “I’m on the business side, and so decisions made by our CIO and IT folks affect me directly, and my teams’ workflows and processes,” he added. Speaking to a room of tech leaders at the CIO 100 Leadership Live New York event last week, Thakrar explained that every company wants the speed of AI-generated work wedded to the quality of human work, even though these two are diametrically opposed. No amount of model upgrades or spend will close that gap, so the only way forward is to architect your way out.

Full opinion : At the CIO 100 Leadership Live New York event last week, Zoho’s head of sales and account management walked through lessons the software provider has learned about deploying effective agentic AI.