The Impact and Influence of UiPath in AI Automation

Ready for a fascinating conversation with Bobby Patrick, the mastermind behind UiPath's evolution from a Romanian startup to a global leader in AI-powered automation? Strap in as Bobby navigates us through their journey, unwrapping their mission to usher in a new era of human achievement through AI. 

Discover UiPath's latest breakthrough, Project Wingman, a trailblazer that employs natural language to build automations, slashing automation time by a staggering 80%. We'll also explore UiPath's colossal influence in the AI sphere, including their hosting of pivotal AI events and the immense impact their innovations are having on companies globally. Bobby sheds light on UiPath's growth, its significant contributions to the AI landscape, and its thrilling future plans. Don't miss out on this enlightening talk!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Hey everybody, evan Kirstel, here live. We are coming from Las Vegas, where UiPath is showcasing its latest and greatest AI and GenAI capabilities. Bobby Patrick, how are you?

Speaker 2 0:15

Evan, it's great to be here. It's great to be here with you virtually. Next time, hopefully, we're together. But yeah, this conference that AI for is blown away my expectations. It's really amazing to see the quality of the enterprises that are here that are all trying to figure out how do I make AI work, how do I make all of these boardroom visions now actually work with AI. So I'm doing well.

Speaker 1 0:39

Evan Fantastic, and for those two people watching who may not have heard of UiPath, first of all, where have you been? Secondly, maybe introduce yourself and UiPath to those folks in particular. Your AI push over the last many, many months.

Speaker 2 0:55

Yeah, so I personally. I've been with UiPath coming on six years now. We were the startup out of Romania. We're just moving to New York City. Founder Daniel Dinez an amazingly kind, great guy, super technical whiz moved the company from headquarters to New York City. I joined.

Speaker 2 1:12

We were I don't know 2014,. 20 million ARR annual recurring revenue. Now we're $1.2 billion plus in just six years. But, more importantly, it's been a ride where we've created this automation software that really liberates and frees humans from the mundane and rote and now, thanks to AI-powered automation, actually helps humans make better decisions because more of an assistance to solve complex problems in critical industries like healthcare and advancing curers or improving patient access or patient support or airlines or any other industry. So the technology has really evolved in a tremendous way and we've got about 10,000 plus customers right now most of the Fortune 2000 worldwide and they talk, they rave about how they've created a digital workforce that now augments their human workforce, which is important in the world of constrained labor with UiPath robots and our automation software to make their lives better and to ultimately to accelerate human achievement, which is kind of what we're all about.

Speaker 1 2:26

Fantastic mission and you're everywhere. So many events, but why is AI for this particular event so interesting and important and timely for UiPath?

Speaker 2 2:37

You know, evidently in 2017, we got on stage at Ford One, which was our first signature event, and we're on Ford Six this year. It's crazy, but I remember when we created it, one of the things we talked about was that actually automation and our core technology at time called robotic process automation. Rpa actually is the best path to apply AI in the enterprise, because you're going to basically attach a machine learning model to an actual workflow or the data that flows through a workflow that touches many applications, and at the time, that was pretty much out there. People were like, oh okay, let's just focus on automating a task, like that was what we talked about at the time, and since then, we've been putting more AI in our technology stack. Where we can, you know, our robots can look at a computer screen like humans can help make decisions, can do, you know, turn a rules-based workflow into an experience-based workflow where it improves over time based on the experience that a robot or an automation learns. So AI has kind of been growing inside of us, but also the fact that, you know, we were able to actually go into how our customers want to apply their own AI, so it's been pretty core to our business. And then I think you know, last year, interchat, gpt and this AI euphoria that but I'm sure you talk about often it's now the center of, you know, of almost every customer conversation. So you know we've leaned into that.

Speaker 2 4:00

Ai4 is one of the largest conferences dedicated to AI and the enterprise. We're a top sponsor here. We're the track sponsor for the generative AI track. We've already done a great demo with rounds of applause from the audience. They saw what our technology can do in integrating and open AI, chat, cpt with automation workflows. We really belong here and we're really an AI company that we define AI powered automation. Ever before, every company put AI powered in front of their product lines. We actually, so I'll have to change that forward six this year. But yeah, it's a great event. I tell you, government customers are here, large enterprises and they're looking to learn about responsible AI. They're looking to learn about, you know, how to get around AI bias or AI pollution, how to deploy AI into customer service use cases, into mission critical use cases, how to worry about fraud and other things. So it's a real hands on conference and it's pretty tremendous.

Speaker 1 5:03

Tremendous indeed, and you made some pretty tremendous announcement today, a flurry of announcements Any in particular you want to share with us here?

Speaker 2 5:11

Yeah, so we've been on a journey over the last, say, six months to really begin to apply kind of natural language technologies, you know, in the case of open AI inspiration, To our own platform in two key areas. And today we announced the private preview, which you can go and register for, on insideruipathcom, where you can actually use natural language to help create automations. And today we demoed and showed what we call Project Wingman, you know named forthcoming at when we were unveiling this publicly in forward six. But essentially you'll use natural language, say you know, I want to go pull from my sales source account. You know all this customer information for customers over revenue of a hundred grand. I want to apply these restrictions to that data and I want to generate an email from chat. I want to review that email, important, sent out, and I want to send it out, you know, later today. And all of that produces a workflow that used to have to drag and drop in studio just produces a whole workflow right in front of you. So now you just cut down the time to automate by like 80%, right, Because your workflow is constructed for you. So all you have left are, you know, kind of going through and picking out and verifying, maybe thresholds or qualifications or variables or other kinds of things.

Speaker 2 6:25

But so so one big announcement really is the availability now of that natural language interface to our flagship product called UiPath Studio. Essentially, what we're going to do is help ultimately make every employee of the company an automation creator. And then we started kind of teasing out other big announcements for us as well. So we have another project called Code, Named Jarvis, which applies automation to our assistant tool, which is what an end user might use, say, an airline agent or an airline customer service representative or an insurance representative. Today they use that assistance to kick off automations that were pre-built by a Center of Excellence. That end user will be able to create automations. That end user will be able to talk and say I want to launch an automation that does X, Y and Z. So what we're really showing here is real natural language interfaces to the entire process of creating and consuming automations.

Speaker 1 7:22

So exciting Project. Wingman brings together not just natural language but AI computer vision. You can get a deep understanding of a computer screen with GenAI. I mean this is well ahead of the curve here in terms of capabilities. It sounds like.

Speaker 2 7:37

Yeah, I mean there's a lot of competitors and a lot of noise out there that talked about some basics. This is real working code. It's available now in private preview, public preview maybe four, six weeks, and then commercial in forward six. So we're the largest R&D effort in the world devoted to AI-powered automation, by orders of magnitude. So these guys are hard at work and delivery is the great stuff, Evan.

Speaker 1 8:05

Fantastic so many tools, so little time to experiment with. I'm excited to get my hands on Microsoft Copilot Now. How is Wingman different from compared to tools like Copilot or others that are out there?

Speaker 2 8:21

Yeah, but the Copilot has been good, sort of like open AI with Microsoft. I mean, it kind of legitimized it in the world of the enterprise. Copilot, I think, helped give the excitement about oh well, I can talk to my computer and produce some kind of code as a result of human language. I think the challenge, though, is Microsoft is trying to be everything to everyone. The reality is that actually applying AI to real use cases requires deep capability sets that can actually address those use cases. I think, in the world of automation, where we understand the computer screen, where we understand and interact with many applications not just Microsoft Stack applications, but whatever applications you might use even legacy systems, spreadsheets, google Sheets, that heterogeneous way that you really work I mean, I'm sure, evan, you have your own tech stack. You probably use a few different tools for every day, maybe maybe a dozen the ability to actually build a workflow and understand how those interoperate it's something that's very unique to the UI platform.

Speaker 2 9:31

I think Copilot set a vision. I think it's still not available in beta until October, evan, you probably know better, but I think we're really delivering on that in the world of automation, and it makes a big difference. I think, evan, the biggest example is that Microsoft's a partner of ours. We're a friend of me. They obviously are close to open or closed AI, whatever you want to call them. They're not here at this conference. I'm shocked. You've got Deloitte here, you got HP here, you got always great companies PwC, aws. The reality is these companies are looking to figure out how do I really apply automation and AI and AI algorithms, how work gets done and do that in a way that is secure, the governance and such. I think UI pass on the front end of making that part happen. Microsoft's doing a great job of umbrella vision and air cover.

Speaker 1 10:28

Well, we appreciate your leadership in this space. Speaking of which, forward six coming up in just two months my first forward five last year and wow, what an amazing community, what an amazing event. You guys did a phenomenal job. Tough to beat last year, but I guess you're going to try. What can we expect?

Speaker 2 10:51

I've said that every year since board one, which was in New York, board two in Miami. At board one, we overtook the Marriott, the big one, marriott Marquire, whatever it was. They were two big brands. I went to Fontaine Blue in Miami. I wish everyone had been there. That was awesome. We couldn't fit in there. We went to the Bellagio in forward three and now we can fit there. We're actually here in the MGM. We'll get four or 5,000 people. We're ahead of all the numbers of interest and sponsorships.

Speaker 2 11:23

I think it's a defining event for not only automation, but for enterprise AI. We're going to be taking this world to a whole new level, with big announcements on stage, about 225 customer-led talks All right, d chirping time. These are real Apple and these aren't basic use cases in task automation anymore. Right, these are how am I really transforming HR? How am I really transforming supply chain? Right? The Intel Chief Trade Officer? Well, I just got up with him recently. He's gonna speak about revolutionizing Finally, in 30 years of him doing this work, the ability to drive more efficient compliance and trade across 100 countries. Right, so this is real use cases. That's building real, huge value. In some cases, you know, billion dollars plus value, like in a signal or something. So, yeah, this is gonna be a great one, ed, but I promise we'll top it. You know, or I'll buy you some drinks and you know well, you can tell me what I could do better, and we'll do that anyway, all right.

Speaker 1 12:24

well, october 9th, you know, sign up, pencil it in. I know there are a lot of overlapping and competing events, but this is one not to miss for sure. Well, bobby, you have a busy next day or two. As the event rolls up, what are you looking forward to next? What's next on the agenda?

Speaker 2 12:43

Yeah, so it's pretty cool. We watched today spot the robot walk upstairs and down to like a dog robot going up and down, in how it used computer vision to see the room and to be able to take. If you take a picture of spot the robot, it actually poses for you. It's really impressive. You know that computer vision technology on top of a physical robot it's not much different than our computer vision technology. It's like a human looking at a screen right, and that the comparison's actually a very real one. But the innovation here has been amazing.

Speaker 2 13:12

Mastercard, their chief data office, was on stage, all about AI governance, like the thought leadership right now on stage. Our chief strategy officer, brandon Deere, was on stage and Evan, he was so cool, he had the CEO do not pay, joshua Bowden out there and they talked about how you can right now go do not pay and for $36, you can have your own law, your fight back against robot calls. You know you can get 1500 back for every robot call you get to your phone. You probably didn't know how to fight that. Well, they actually have a solution for doing it. You gotta.

UI Path's AI Leadership and Time

Speaker 2 13:46

I'll be the post video later, evan, you gotta watch it. It is the coolest thing. So he interviewed. He talked about how his robots fight back, you know, to win better outcomes against the chat bots and Comcast on. You know when you're pissed off at your cable company, right? So really amazing talks and I'm looking forward to more of them. And you know, I think UI path having a front and center stage at what may be one of the most important AI in the enterprise events this year showcases our determination to lead the AI era for the, you know, for the rest of this decade.

Speaker 1 14:18

Well, so exciting, the most exciting time in my career probably yours and exciting days at UI path. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes to share you know, insights and opportunities, and we'll see you at forward six All right, thanks, everyone Take care, take care, thank you.