We reduced the time, almost five minutes per patient. We're giving you back almost two hours to your day. We literally had providers that were tearing up. I can be home to see my kids' games. I can be home to do homework.
We have navigated through a pandemic.
Supply chain crisis across the world trade.
Wars, and we have even navigated real wars that are taking place.
The speed we are moving at innovation surprises us.
We have more than doubled in size.
We've become the first in-market multimodal.
AI that can understand video. Oracle really gave us exactly the product that we needed.
What I cannot do with any other.
Application is get AI so close to data. Our data is in Oracle, our metadata is in Oracle.
It's also Oracle. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a great platform.
To build AI tools.
The relationship between us and Oracle goes beyond the commercial aspects.
They treat the investment as if it's their own.
The tech offering is great, the people are better.
We are truly a partnership. When we win, they win.
Please welcome to the stage Chief Executive Officer of Oracle, Mike Sicilia.
Good morning. Good morning everyone. If you're watching online from somewhere else in the world, good afternoon. Good evening as the case may be. Welcome to Oracle AI World. We know that your time is incredibly valuable, and the fact that you've chosen to spend it here with us this week is much appreciated. I also know that many of you probably joined us in years past for Cloud World or even before that, Oracle Open World. Today we are faced with a once in a generation moment where AI changes everything, and all of our collective innovations along the way serve as the foundation for our AI platform going forward. AI World is our way of bringing it all together, showcasing how Oracle, and of course all of you, are not just experiencing the era of AI, but together we're defining it. We've made no secret about it.
As AI reshapes business everywhere, Oracle stands apart as the leader. We're delivering trusted AI that's transforming organizations in every industry. AI is no longer just about changing the technology. It's not about just some new features. It's about changing how business is done everywhere. It changes how you serve your customers, how you find the best talent, how you save money, how you accelerate productivity, how you innovate and beyond. All of us together are right at the center of this amazing revolution. Today you're going to hear from leaders across industries that are already harnessing the power of Oracle AI to unlock the full potential of applied enterprise AI within their organizations. You're going to hear how they're changing outcomes and how they're even creating brand new ones as a result.
We're not just showing up with some AI bells and whistles bolted onto old technology. There is no other company that's bringing together the data, the infrastructure, the applications, and the trust to power every AI ambition for every business at every single layer of the tech stack. Of course, it all starts with data, the fuel for AI. For decades, the Oracle database has managed the world's most valuable data. Today, the Oracle database is AI native. It's built to store all your data and to bring intelligence to everything you do so that you can build faster, you can scale securely, and you can power your most important, important workloads.
Our AI Data Platform builds on all of this, combining your enterprise data, both structured and unstructured, with the very best generative AI models so that you can run and create AI agents and analytics and leverage your private data with world-class models without sacrificing any of the security around your private data. Internally, we use the very same platform to deliver embedded AI agents across our complete suite of applications, empowering AI outcomes from the edge to the front office to the back office. Of course, it's all powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the AI infrastructure leader that is trusted to train and serve more AI models than any other hyperscaler, delivering speed, security, cost effectiveness, and scale. I know that many of you are already putting Oracle AI to work across every part of your business.
Every day you're hiring faster, you're predicting cash flow more accurately, streamlining expenses, you're flagging supply chain risks, resolving service tickets instantly. You're getting real results with no extra cost and no waiting. Internally at Oracle, we're seeing exactly the same results. It's working. In fact, 80% of our employees have said that AI has already improved their work quality. In finance, our touchless expense automation and invoice matching are cutting cycle times and saving several days per quarter. In forecasting, in HR, AI-driven recruiting is shortening time to hire and freeing thousands of employee and manager hours thanks to the AI built into our Fusion HCM applications. In sales, AI-guided deal progression is accelerating cycles, boosting forecast, and raising win rates. Supply chain real-time alerts and accurate ETAs are keeping goods moving and cutting delays.
In support, AI ticket handling and autonomous problem solving are cutting resolution times by more than half. The true impact isn't just about systems and statistics. It's actually about changing everything. It's about solving entire problems and doing things in a much better way. It's about giving employees more time for their work that's most impactful. If you're at a service desk, it should mean resolving issues in real time instead of logging tickets and waiting possibly days for answers. If you're a finance leader, it means spotting risk and opportunities before they show up in the numbers, seeing around corners instead of just reporting the past. If you work in HR, supply chain operations, it means instant insights and automation that let you focus on strategy, creativity, and care for your people.
When you are the customer, it means that every interaction feels personal, whether you're calling a help desk, you're checking into a hotel, or you're booking a car. To bring this to life, I'm very shortly going to be joined by leaders in energy, travel, hospitality, and biotech. These are industries where trust, reliability, and human connection matter most. They are going to discuss how Oracle AI is already changing their customer interactions and even creating new outcomes as a result. To kick it off, we're going to hear from a company that's powering millions of homes and businesses and leading innovation in the energy sector. Let's hear more.
Exelon powers more than 10 million businesses and households across the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Chicago. Now, guided by insights from revolutionary data technologies, the nation's largest energy delivery company is further modernizing its infrastructure and accelerating toward a more affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy future. Exelon is driving the energy transformation by modernizing its infrastructure, accelerating the shift to clean energy, and rising to meet the unprecedented power demands of the AI revolution. By embedding artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics across its operations, Exelon is building a smarter, more resilient grid to power innovation at scale. Please welcome to the stage President and Chief Executive Officer of Exelon, Calvin Butler.
Thank you,Calv .
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Calvin, thanks again for being here. I know you have an incredibly busy week, and you rearranged your schedule to make sure you could be here. That's really appreciated.
You know what?
Excellent. You've transformed how you operate across finance, customer engagement, and actually the grid itself. Maybe to kick us off, can you tell us what you think defines this transformation and what has been the enabler for the company to make it happen?
Good morning and thank you for having me. The travel logistics were a little tough, but I think it's an indication. I know it's an indication of the partnership we have with Oracle, which is why I'm here and why members of my team are in the audience. For me, the transformation starts and ends with what are we doing for our customers, how are we showing up for them today and more importantly, how we're going to show up for them over the next decade. Partnering with Oracle has allowed us to really move things onto the cloud to do a few things. I love the slogan powering your business because that is really what it's all about. How can we do things more efficiently, seamlessly removing costs out, but delivering on higher expectations? That's really what it's been about from us since day one.
We utilize, we partner with you guys on a finance side, HR side, operations. That technology is the bedrock for where we're pushing the organization.
Yeah, and it's great. I mean you've been certainly one of the pioneers in leaning into what I think about as the full stack advantage for both of us. You know, avoided customizations, just really leaned into the platform. We certainly appreciate that. What's kind of ironic is when we started that partnership, we maybe didn't realize how much energy and technology were going to converge. I mean we need a little bit of power for these data centers. It's really the sort of symbiotic relationship between energy providers and technology that has to be stronger than ever to meet the world's demands for AI. From your perspective, where do you see parallels in how our industries are going to meet these demands going forward?
The parallels are, to your point, there is definitely a convergence in technology. What we do, we're in an industry now where we will see more transformation in the next 10 years than we've seen over the last 100. In understanding that, what are we going to do about it? As someone who operates one of the largest and most expansive grids through the country, we can't keep running the same play. The technology being placed on our system is an opportunity, but also challenging. One of the things as a CEO that I think about more than most is security. Every time you add a piece of technology on the system, you expose yourself to a level of risk. That's one, partnering with you and technology in general to say, what are we doing to make it more efficient, make it faster, make it better, but minimizing risk.
That's one. I would also say the second piece is going back to that customer centricity. How is technology helping us serve our customers differently in the future? You can't just invest for technology's sake. Because you can appreciate as a utility I have to justify every dollar spent and therefore I'm always talking about the value added to my commissioners. What we need from Oracle and our partners is saying this is the value driven proposition. When you talk about costly upgrades being eliminated, when you talk about seamless transition to data, it is key for us. Creating a data strategy where we can serve them differently is going to be critical for us.
Yeah, it's amazing you bring up so many parallels there. I mean, obviously every time we add components to our grid, if you will, our data center components, we think about what is the potential security impact of this as well. Along the way, we've learned so much from you and your peers in your industry about how to operate 24/7 services, mission critical services. I mean, the days of on premises software, we were a distributor, we distributed the software and many times somebody else was implementing that. We have a relationship with our customers as a custodian of these systems, whether or not we're involved in the implementation. It's a 24/7, mission critical, can't fail, can't fail thing.
I want to thank you because we've learned, I think being a technology provider to your industry for so many years, even pre-cloud, pre-AI, has really taught us so many lessons about how to operate at scale.
One of the things that's key for us is utilizing technology, where we're taking the industry. I'll share with you where Exelon is as far as its operations. We are so proud that we are the leading organization in the industry in terms of reliability and resiliency. We have to get better because as more of us are working from home, more of us are utilizing technology and educating our children. All technology is like, it's so important. Our customers have less patience when you go down. I think you know what you're dealing with in technology as well. When I talk about 24/7 operations, that's critical for us and your technology is embedding that because the data analytics and what we're going to use is going to help me get to 24/7 blue sky days.
How does that change your relationship with customers, both consumers and businesses? One that goes beyond an interaction with the utility. When the lights go out, when there's outages, how does that transform the relationship?
How we communicate to them is critical. Imagine on a blue sky day, you get home and the lights have been flickering. It's nothing more frustrating. If I can do preventive maintenance on the system, communicate with my customers early and let them know what's going on, they can plan for it. When I can tell my customers after any storm, you'll be up within 12 hours because I know what it takes. That's the investment in the system. When my customers call, utilizing the data that we've received from them and understand why they're calling and service them better without them ever having to do anything except for dialing our phone number is critical. That's the relationship and how it's changing.
I have to say, as a customer in one of your service areas.
Thank you.
Your communications around outages, which are infrequent by the way, but usually storm related, are incredibly accurate. It's always great to get the text and get the restoration time and know that maybe there's a little bit of Oracle tech behind that as well.
It's a lot of Oracle tech behind.
We appreciate that partnership. You said you're thinking now in the future, you've said before that you see AI as an enabler, a way to help employees and customers alike both be more efficient and informed. As you look ahead, where do you think the investments are in AI, and how is that going to play out in helping you achieve that mission?
You can appreciate in the utility industry we're not the leaders in deploying AI technology because of all the other things that we're dealing with. We should not be the laggards. I would tell you that I see AI implementation around our customer area more than anything else. We're utilizing it, we're utilizing it now within our finance, our legal, and our regulatory matters. Where we'll have the biggest benefit is in the customer segment. Most people think of AI from a standpoint of it's going to cost you to lose jobs. If we think of deploying that technology in that way, we're going to miss the whole opportunity. It is really going to be around one, how we capture that data and utilize it to the benefit of our customers, ultimately to drive communication outages, to drive interactions, in addition to driving how we invest in our grid.
That's really going to be the mover for us.
Yeah. You know, of all the industries we serve, I mean your industry is up there with banking is health care. It's probably some of the most regulated industries. How are the regulations, you know, how's it going with AI in general in terms of consumer rollout versus grid rollout for AI? What are the hurdles? What are the things that we need to think about collectively there?
That's a great question. It would not surprise anyone in here. The regulators aren't the early adopters and they struggle with new technology because they want it to be proven. You can't prove it until you invest in it. I'm going to be hesitant to invest until I know I can recoup those costs. What we've done with them, you'll see a lot of utilities talking about we're running a pilot, we're running this so we can show the value. I think that prevents the early adoption of certain things. Having said that, when you look at drone technology, the capturing the data, putting it into the database, that's been helpful. When you talk about predictive analytics, that's been helpful. When you show them the value, they get it. It is a slow walk and regulators at the state, local, and federal level are just hesitant.
Yeah. Would you say that, you know, collectively it's incumbent upon us to sort of educate folks on the power, the art of the possible? Right. They may not understand what's really possible here. You talked about some of the stuff at the edge, not necessarily in the mission critical pieces. Is that the best place to start with AI?
It's very important. Yes, because I would tell you, those in this room have a much greater voice in this discussion than us, because as a utility you can appreciate they're going to say you're self serving. When the regulators want the same level of service that they receive from other industry and you can demonstrate and communicate to them what you can do, that's where it's most effective.
Now ultimately your mission is about people. As we discussed, employees in the field, customers at home, communities you serve. As technology evolves and you know, we go through these regulatory processes together, what do you think the biggest impact from let's say AI related technology is going to be to strengthen that mission going forward.
It's always about the people and the communities that we serve. If you don't lose sight of that, that's where, going back to your question earlier, technology is that enabler. For us, it's ensuring that we do a business case for every investment we make. How are we demonstrating that the business case was actually met? We've been partnering on our customer program and the challenge is, how do I take my employees that have been working in the company for 30 - 40 years to utilize that new technology? Let me give you an example. I was out in the field the other day with some crew members. Both of the gentlemen have been working with the company for 40 years, but now they're out there with an iPad. I asked him, how was that transition for you?
He said it was tough, but we had to do it because now on one particular substation, they've got all this equipment capturing data and we retrained and retooled them. That's where I say it's about the people, because I can have all this technology, but if they don't know how to use it and aren't fulfilling it, it's done.
Yeah, it's a fantastic point. You know, particularly in industries that are heavily regulated, the technology tends to get locked down for a longer period of time. If you will, it's the system that people know, and any kind of change sometimes is seen as upsetting.
That's right.
The interesting thing about AI is that the rate of change and AI-assisted and enabled functionality, the rate of change is faster than we've ever seen. Do you think you can get to a point where you get a foundational level of training on how to use devices in the field? We hope that these systems become so intuitive, so easy to use, that we can completely eliminate the need for training. I mean, do you share that view? Do you think we can get there for certain roles in the field, or do you think we're going to be in a situation where the training is just here to stay? We're going to have to continue to invest in it.
I would tell you, as someone who starts and finishes with the safety of our employees, I'm going to always involve some level of training because we, when we're dealing with electricity and gas, that is something that is so important. What AI and technology will do, it's your first check, your second check, and your third check. That's what technology enables. That's how I saw the men using that out in the field that day, is that they thought they were seeing something and technology was confirming or saying, no, you're off. That's the important part. The training is going to be critical because it's life or death. I never want that phone call of saying we lost someone or someone got seriously injured because something failed.
I think it goes to the point that you made earlier about not worrying about the new systems replacing people, but actually making their job safer, making them more secure and making them better.
I'll give you another example of that. Remember when smart meters were coming out, everyone was like, what are we going to do with meter readers? That job, that entry-level job, we retrained all those meter readers, and those individuals are now doing jobs within the organization that they had no idea how to do. Technology was the enabler for that, and that's how I see us using it.
Yeah. It's a terrific story. Your vision around how AI can assist I think is spot on. We look forward to continued partnership. Thank you very much for the investment. Thank you for coming here today and making all the sacrifices you made in your schedule.
We very much appreciate the partnership. Thank you.
Thank you, Kelly. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next we're going to talk with an industry titan who's running one of the most complex data and pricing systems in all of global transportation. Let's learn some more.
Budget Group understands that after a long flight, travelers want every next step to feel effortless. That's why they've always invested in technologies to deliver solutions to get on the road even faster. More than 50 years ago, Avis pioneered the car rental industry's first computer-based reservation system, a milestone that set the tone for everything that followed. Today, that same spirit of innovation drives their work in AI with the goal of creating streamlined, intuitive experiences from pickup to drop off. Please join me in welcoming Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at Avis Budget Group Ravi Simhambhatla.
You have a lot of fans out there.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here, Ravi.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Avis is known for optimizing every part of the customer and employee experience, from fleet management to pricing to automation. Let's start big picture. What are some of the business goals that you're pursuing with AI, and how is it actually transforming your organization?
Right. At Avis Budget Group, first of all, thank you for having me here. In our company we have three major pillars that we're very laser focused on. The first is customer. That includes customer acquisition and customer experience. The second is vehicle. That includes buying and selling of vehicles, supply chain, pretty complex processes. The third is people. People who are our greatest asset. As we look at how we want to invest in our company and grow our company and also find adjacencies to our current business, which is car rental, we have to look at technology as the bedrock of everything that we do going forward.
When we look at how we manage our business, we have a strategic plan that extends into the end of 2027, and we have very clear measurements and metrics and KPIs on what kind of revenue, what kind of EBITDA margin, customer experience scores, and all of these come together in our performance and how we manage our performance throughout the company. Technology, especially with the advent of AI, is now playing a very, I would say, a very deep and important role in our business.
Now, speaking of your transformation in AI, you were one of the very first customers to go live on the Oracle AI Data Platform. Why did you start there, and what was the problem you were trying to solve?
Okay, why? We started this rather simple. We were on a highly deprecated version of Oracle and to get support, we had to jump. We decided, hey, if you're going to jump, you might as well jump to the latest and greatest that's out there where Oracle is investing in. The more I heard about Oracle 23AI and its capabilities, the initial capabilities, but the roadmap of capabilities that extend over the years. I discussed this with my team and we thought it would be the best option for us to go jump right into it and be with Oracle as they're building out this product. The capabilities that you espouse are the ones that we will be using intensively at Avis to drive our business. I'm very hopeful that they'll come out soon.
We've already migrated a bunch of our data across to OC I and 23AI on OCI and we will continue to do that all through next year.
Speaking of your team, I'm curious. With the Oracle AI Database and the fact that you can use natural language prompts versus, you know, just SQL to get insights into things like pricing, competition, operations, how does that change the way your teams work today? Both your commercial teams, your IT teams, your operations teams, what's different about using natural language versus, you know, traditional query mechanisms?
All right, I've been in this business for 37 years. I don't look it, but the world has changed. You know, we used to talk about, and Mike, you would have heard about this statement, you know, data is the new oil. It is actually the new oil, and AI is the enabler of that oil to come to life. I imagine a world for my company, for everyone at Avis, to become problem solvers, not information gatherers, problem solvers. Using these tools, asking questions in natural language and having your curiosity served by the engine is what we need. Think about the world today of analytics, where the vast majority of people are using some sort of dashboard or the other. A term that you would all be aware of or familiar with is slice and dice.
You guys remember that you tap on something, you click on one link and you go to another link, and by the time you get insights from the data so you can actually take action, there's quite a big lag there. Imagine if you were able to ask the engine the question where you try to get to in the first place, place the answer you're trying to get to without having to go through the rigmarole of trying to read through the entire process. To me, that's the power, and I want to give this capability to our entire company in their divisions, whether it's commercial, whether it's operational, of course, technology, so they can run their business in a far more efficient manner.
Yeah, I was just going to ask you that. Does this free up your IT team for different types of work, and are you going to allow the commercial teams to directly query, using natural language, into these systems?
Yeah, absolutely. Today's technology team needs to enable our entire business. My team, and I'm really proud of them, they're the epicenter of driving the growth and the modernization of our business. Our job is to enable everyone and get out of the way. I see our roles, you know, migrating away from who we are today to becoming Senior Business Advisors to the rest of the company on how to adopt technology. Move forward.
Now, shifting gears a bit, obviously you've made a huge investment in the Oracle AI Database , but you're also making a huge investment in Oracle Fusion Applications, and you're bringing embedded AI, particularly into your finance system. With the Fusion AI agents, where are you leaning in? First, you. What advice would you have and what kinds of results do you expect to see as deploying those AI agents?
All right, first of all, tip of my hat to Mark Moerdler and Jody Clayton for actually enabling all this for us. Thank you. I would say it's everywhere, but we're trying to contain ourselves because the opportunity is so immense. The areas I'll kind of focus on are procurement. We have brand new leadership in the company that's driving procurement transformation, and that runs across fleet, supply chain, parts, what have you. It's a huge function that we haven't paid much attention to in the past, but now we have the platform, we have Oracle Fusion , and then you have the AI agents on the other side that have been built specifically to drive these processes into becoming far more efficient. It behooves us to dive into that, making procurement more efficient on the field.
We have our field agents, I would say actually technicians who need to order parts in real time. I don't want them to have to think about which part to order for which car at the best price. They just need to ask for the part, and the engine needs to decide at that point in time what is the best part for them to have. That's huge for them. Drives efficiency on the one hand, gets our car back into the mix for rental, and it also saves costs on the backside of the equation. Really happy about that. Data quality is huge today. My team, just because of the legacy that we inherited, we used to spend an inordinate amount of time cleansing data that traversed between systems, which for smart technology people is a very mundane, boring, and just a bad task.
We are using Oracle technology to actually automate the data cleansing and the data quality so we can focus on bigger, better things. I can say there's a tremendous push across the organization and there are a plethora of examples that I can talk to.
You spoke a bit earlier about not just the quantitative impact, but the qualitative impact on the business as well, in terms of time and decision quality. How do you, and we're hearing that in lots of industries, it's not just about faster, less expensive, but actually qualitative. How do you measure the qualitative impact of AI and how does that differ from measuring, you know, for traditional ROI on a project?
That's a great question. You know, business goals and metrics and KPIs will always remain the same. Today AI is the enabler. I'm sure in about 10 years from now there'll be AI plus quantum or what have you, there'll be some new technology, but you have to always keep that under the COVID. What matters most is how are we driving a business? Are we growing market share? Are we growing revenue? Are we growing margin, EBITDA? Is our customer experience getting better? These are all tangible measurements that we make today. How AI plays into this, in my opinion, is our decision making timeline. From the time we observe that something needs to get done to the time it gets done and it's out there in front of our customers, in front of employees, that time is greatly, greatly reduced.
What AI does for organizations is it gives back the most important commodity that we have no control over: time. Imagine if something that took you five hours to do in a day took you less than two minutes.
My God.
It's not about golf, and you could go golfing, but you could do more work. I really believe that that's how we're going to measure this, how quickly we are out to market and how quickly we're able to make the right decisions for the company.
With all that time back in the day, you look out in the near term or even far term, hard horizon, how does it change the role for your IT team? Do you see your IT team as becoming more of a strategic advisor inside the company? How does that evolve? What does that look like over time?
It was an interesting question, so I thought a lot about that. Next year we're going to be 80 years old. You can imagine where we run the gamut from the very legacy way of doing things, legacy processes, to the very modern way of doing things. We've got everything in the middle. My goal and the way I want it to be positioned is to enable our people again, who are our biggest asset. Yesterday I said in a forum too, for me, AI does not stand for artificial intelligence. It stands for augmenting individuals. Our job as leaders is to grow people. I see for us, at Avis, what my team has done, the magic they've delivered over the last few years, is definitely in that direction.
We are going to become senior advisors to the company on how we can meet our company goals and exceed them every day.
Speaking of people, when we were talking earlier, you made it a point to talk about the importance of the partnership, the importance of the Oracle team and the Avis team coming together. I think some of the things that you said back there are really worth repeating because they were very powerful. I wonder if you could share just how's the partnership going in terms of the Oracle resource, the Avis resource, because you're involved in it, you're leaning into AI in almost every way possible. How's the partnership going and what's made it so successful?
The word I use is excellence. I would say from the Oracle team, I think I see Mark, Mark Heuer on the team, Shahjeel in the back, Nat, Ryan, Tejas, Jody. There are so many names that I can speak about, but a fantastic cohesion of strength from Oracle that's come to Avis.
Equally.
My team and I see them right there, they're the best in the business. Please don't try and hire them. I need them, but they give us the permission to be here. They're fantastic. Between these two teams, they have really delivered a lot. They've moved really fast. I expect to see the results though. This is all talk in the next 90 days as you push very, very hard. I just like to thank everybody in this room for that.
Yeah, as you said, I think you've gotten to the point and it really speaks to your culture inside Avis, and that when you get into these huge transformation projects and we're involved in several of them, you get to that point of teamwork. It's hard to figure out on any given day who works for Oracle and who works for Avis, and it almost doesn't matter because everybody is so mutually invested in delivering the outcome. We couldn't be more excited to partner with you. I want to thank you very much for your investment, your partnership, and for leaning into AI in such a huge way. I really appreciate what you said about success, not just the dollars and time, but also quality, and all that of course leads to growth.
I mean, just a super powerful example of a truly global business running smarter and serving your customers better, which is the business that all of us are in, thanks to this great partnership, and we appreciate your investment.
Thank you, Mikey.
Thank you, team.
Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, now we're going to be joined by another iconic brand. It's reimagining hospitality, and they're using AI to empower employees and to enrich the guest experience. Let's see what they're up to.
When you step into any one of Marriott 9,000+ properties around the world, you feel at home. The world's largest hospitality company is just as welcoming of next generation technology designed to make guest experiences more satisfying and comfortable. Over the past year, Marriott has been investing in advanced AI tools across its global properties, embedding innovation into daily operations. These efforts are focused on enhancing the guest experience, supporting associates, and ensuring properties operate more efficiently and sustainably. Please welcome to the stage Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President, Global Operations Services of Marriott International, Ty Breland.
Thanks for being here, Ty. I saw some of the smoke come out, I thought maybe Def Leppard was coming, something there. Thanks again for spending your time here this week. I know you're quite busy and we appreciate you coming here to tell the Marriott story because I think it's a terrific one.
It's good to be here.
You've got a huge workforce, massive amount of associates worldwide, most of them in customer-facing roles. How do you think about AI, you think about the approach, how do you approach that to both empower your employees and enhance the guest experience at the same time?
At Marriott , we have 800,000 people at 9,000 properties in 143 countries. We have been guided by our core values for nearly a century. At the heart of those core values is really putting people first. As we started to deploy AI, we started there, you know, how can we best help our people? That has guided us through this journey, really looking at what matters most. How can we help our associates take the friction out, create capacity for them so they can better serve our guests, but really starting with the people? At the end of the day, if we really get this right, AI isn't replacing the human touch, it's bringing the human forward.
Speaking of people, you've got a three part decision lens that you look at. It's associates, customers, guests, and owners, all three of which are people, organizations. How do you, again maybe expanding on the first question, how does AI support all three groups at once? Because all three are very important constituents for your business.
Yeah. At Marriott , a lot of people don't know, but of those 9,000 properties I mentioned, we only own a handful of them. The vast majority are owned by REITs or individuals. Those owners are a huge and very important part of the equation. Of course, every time we're making a decision or trying to look at an opportunity, we look at it through the lens of our associate, we look at it through the lens of our guests, but also those owners. For those associates, as we're deploying AI, we're really looking to simplify their roles and really enrich the work that they're doing for our guests. We want to give them a more personalized, authentic experience and speed things up. We're moving at pace and people demand that. We really want to better serve those guests.
For those owners, it's really taking out the cost and complexity, generating efficiencies so that we can produce stronger returns and they continue to grow with us.
You were sharing with me earlier today just how much work somebody checking a person into a hotel is actually doing behind the scenes. You're standing there at the desk, just how much screen flipping is happening and how much that person actually has to do to get you properly checked into the hotel. More times than not, it goes seamlessly well and the experience is great. In your opening comment, you said it's not about replacing humans, it's actually bringing about the human part of hospitality forward. It's actually about accelerating the human interaction. Let's kind of walk through checking into a hotel, checking into a Marriott property, within the age of AI. What does it look like for the associate and for the guest?
Let me start with how it looks now. If you ever really want a challenge, go try to check someone in one of our hotels. Today we're working across dozens of systems. We call it Swivel Chair. We're in the midst of a journey of our digital and technology transformation that's really going to change that process for good and take those dozens of systems and move them into a more unified view. Today when you check in, it's a very manual process. It's navigating multiple systems. You'll notice when you check in, there's a lot of, you know, key punching going on as someone's trying to pull up your reservation. If you have to make a change to it, they're jumping out of that system into another one. With our digital and tech transformation, it's going to be all this unified view, what we're calling single pane of glass.
It'll be more of a point and click process. What that's going to do for us is really allow that associate at the desk to come out from behind that desk. Less of the time on process and more of the time with people and engaging them in conversation, sharing facts about the property, things that they can do around in that general area, but really engaging in this more authentic hospitality as opposed to being hung up in the process of keystrokes.
Are your associates excited about AI? I mean, what they've seen, little glimpses of it? Do they want more of it? If so, how are you helping people feel confident and comfortable with the tech rather than intimidated by it? You know, we see the same issues, maybe health care. I'll say, you know, you've got these very complex systems, and while nobody really loves using them, it is the system that they know. Change is change. Change is always going to have some amount of negativity because I got to learn something new. How's it going for you, and how are you getting people comfortable with this new generation?
I think first, you know, we started our journey with our AI studio in 2023, and we were very purposeful about having it co-chaired by our Head of Global Tech and Revenue, our Chief Customer Officer, and myself from an HR and Operations standpoint. As we started to engage in this journey, that word confidence was really at the apex of the conversation. How could we best get our associates to want to grab the technology as opposed to it feeling pushed on them? We started by looking at our Customer Engagement Center. That's the number you call if you need to change something or book a reservation if you're not doing it online. For those agents, we went out and said, what's the most painful part of your job? If we could fix one, two, three things that would enrich your role, what would it be?
We started there, and as we started to deploy those solutions, it became contagious. They really wanted more. They're adopting it, they're sharing it with their colleagues, and really putting it to work. We're in a really fun industry. People want to serve others, and they want to take that time and do something with it. I think a lot of times when we're talking about efficiency of days gone by, it was, how do you do more with less? What we're really trying to do with AI is how do you do less but have more impact? At the end of the day for us, service is something you do, but hospitality is how you make that customer feel. They remember that long after their check-in.
Yeah, absolutely. It's a really fascinating point you just made about asking associates, what's the most painful part of your job? Because we think about traditional IT implementations, we often start with corporate goals. We often start with, you know, things we need to automate. We need to spend less money, we need to save money here. We need to do all those things. AI actually gives us an opportunity to ask very different questions. What is the problem you're trying to solve at the edge? If you can solve problems at the edge, your guest experience gets better as a result. I mean, if the associate's having a better day, your guests are going to have a better day. Right. If the associates are not struggling with the system, your guests are going to feel more comfortable and more empowered.
I think it's a really fascinating point for all of us to keep in mind.
I mean, it's important to always remember those individuals doing the job know most about the job, you know, so I don't try to go to a hotel and tell them how to operate. I ask what we can do to help them, because they know more about what they're doing than anyone else. I think the same is true as we're trying to solve for these opportunities and apply AI.
If we go beyond the front desk, beyond the check-in experience, beyond the stay experience, thinking about cultivating your Bonvoy members in general. Bonvoy is obviously a massive global program, one of the most popular hospitality apps in the world today. I'm a customer of it, by the way.
Great. Thank you for your business.
Thank you. I have 271,000 points right now.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I might even more because I told you I stayed at a property last week.
All right, I haven't redeemed those.
What do we expect to see in that pre check-in experience, that member experience? How do you see AI shaping the guest journey before they even show up at one of your properties?
Yeah, I mean, there's a few things that we're doing right now. I'll go to Bonvoy first and I can jump around to a couple of other things. In our Bonvoy program, kind of that most elite tier is called an Ambassador. What we're doing with AI right now is really offering this white glove service. You call the CEC Center Associate, your content information is pulled up. We're starting to look and have a conversation with you about where you want to stay, where you want to go. I know you recently stayed at our property in New York. Maybe you also wanted to do a dinner somewhere. All of that information is surfacing so that we can provide you and your wife this really bespoke itinerary that's going to make that trip even more memorable.
That's a spot that we're using it right now as it relates to the Bonvoy program. We're really trying to leverage AI wherever we can. First we ask the question, what work doesn't need to happen anymore? Then where we do need to automate, how do we do so in a way that it's a bit behind the scenes? There's a lot of things that take place at a hotel that we don't want the guests to necessarily know anyway and that's another place. Your stay should be a bit more seamless, it should be more fluid. If you need to change things around, it should be easier than it has been in the past.
How far in advance of the guest in-person, physical experience does the AI journey start? As you think about the changes to Bonvoy and embedding AI there, how far in advance do you start to captivate that guest experience using AI before they show up at the property?
Hopefully we're doing it before you think you even need to take a trip.
I was just going to ask, is it before you even made your reservation?
As the idea of travel and where you want to go is coming up, we're hoping that you're coming to Marriott.com or on our digital app, and we're bringing that information to you to help shape that experience, experience of where you want to go next. AI is sitting behind the scenes on all of those transactions there forth.
It's really, it's really certainly amazing. I think that, you know, this is such a terrific example of, you know, augmented AI enhancing human interaction, not replacing human interaction. There's a lot of negativity, some negativity around AI is going to take all these things away from everybody. Actually, this is a terrific example of giving human beings more time to focus on the things that matter. And that's your guest.
We talk about it as an investment in our associates. We see AI as an investment, whether it's the training and how to write prompts and leverage it, but also freeing up that capacity so you can do what you really love and taking care of our guests. That's how we're talking about AI inside of Marriott, and that's how we want to continue to fuel that as a superpower for our associates as opposed to something we're doing to them.
Your vision is spot on. We certainly share the belief that AI can reduce friction, create better experiences, and ultimately in many, many industries, hospitality being one of the more prominent ones, make people more cared for. Thank you for sharing the vision. Thank you for the partnership and we look forward to hearing more about all of the success of Marriott International and Bonvoy now.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, our final customer for this segment is doing some truly amazing work. They're going to talk about using AI not to just transform a business, but literally to save human lives by fighting antibiotic resistance. Let's take a look.
Biofy is at the forefront of developing AI that makes our world a healthier and more sustainable place. The startup is helping researchers identify antibiotic resistant bacteria, develop next generation drugs, innovate methods to enhance crop yields, and explore solutions to environmental threats. High performance cloud infrastructure offers scalable GPU clusters and advanced data technologies. Power Biofy's mission to serve industries as diverse as agriculture, life sciences, and law. Biofy empowers genetic engineers, bioinformatic researchers, and business leaders to solve challenges in producing abundant food and effective drugs. Please welcome to the stage Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Biofy Technologies, Paulo Perez.
Hi.
Thank you so much. Please come in. Bell, thank you so much for traveling all the way from Brazil here with us today. Your story is amazing. I've had the chance to hear your story and I can't wait for everybody else to hear because it's simply amazing.
Thank you.
You know, it's just an incredible use of AI. For those `that` ar`en't familiar with Biofy , could you tell us what's the mission?
In a nutshell, Mike, our mission is, you know, everyone is talking about AI related to, you know, save costs, sometimes to change the way that we work, et cetera. We truly believe that we can use AI to develop tools or to develop solutions that can contribute to the environment and to human life.
Saving lives.
That's unbelievable. You're using AI and using the Oracle Database to fight antibiotic resistance. I mean, that's not something we hear every day. What does that really mean in practice for both hospitals and patients? How does it work? Yeah.
First, let me explain a bit about the solution and how it works. When we have a bacteria, we have an infection, we take a sample of the blood or anything else, and we use DNA sequence process to extract the DNA of the bacteria. It's a huge string with thousands or millions of elements, and we created a function that transformed it in a vector. We created a huge vector database with more than 700,000 of bacteria DNA's. For each new test, we use vector search to identify the bacteria and its resistance to the antibiotics. We do it in just four hours. The traditional test needs five days.
Reducing the time from five days to just four hours in terms of the hospital and the patients is a totally new approach because to know exactly the best treatment in short time can really save the life of the patient.
I mean it's just amazing when you think about what is the Oracle Database vector search. Vectorizing data and vector search have to deal with saving lives. It turns out when combined with your technology, actually quite a lot and you had an experience with a family member, it was exactly that. Five days to grow something out into a petri dish to figure out the right antibiotic. In the meantime, I'm not a doctor, so let's take this as not medical advice, but we overprescribe lots of very wide spectrum heavy duty antibiotics that actually might be completely unnecessary, which we know aren't necessarily beneficial either. It's just a dramatic switch. I know in Brazil you've already seen the solution dramatically reduce mortality rates, dramatically reduce death rates from resistant infections. What's it been like to be at the bedside to see this actually happen?
Yeah, it's sad but in Brazil, traditionally the hospitals, the mortality rate during bacterial infections is close to 70%. It's a huge number, huge number. Using our solution, we reduced it to 50% and we truly believe that we can go further, maybe less than it, maybe 30% or less. Only this year, I'm talking about 2025, we are expecting to save 2,000 lives, only in Brazil, only in the hospitals that we are working now.
You're going to go from 70% resistant antibiotics down to 30%, and is that a factor of the time? In other words, you know, the longer something goes on and untreated, obviously the worse the outcome may possibly be. You're going to take something that's usually five days—figure out the right antibiotics takes five days—down to an hour or two. We start treatment right away.
Yeah, this is the most important thing, you know, to know exactly what kind of bacteria you have and the best treatment changed again. By the way, we are creating a huge bacterial DNA database, and of course that, yeah,
I think this.
Database and the system just continues to get smarter over time. The more samples you have, the more opportunities you have to train. It's just a self-fulfilling prophecy that this whole system gets better. You spoke earlier. I want to go back to something you said about vectors and the importance of vectors and how you're using the Oracle AI Data Platform for this vector search. Why was that the breakthrough and what were the options previously before you used the Oracle AI Data Platform?
Vector search,
the traditional test, you know, as I told, it consumes five days. It's a long time. There is another problem. The other problem is that bacteria are evolving, are having mutations, and identifying it is too hard. Using the vector, this is the beauty of the solution. It's not necessary to have the same original bacterial DNA. We can perform the vector search and identify the close one, the mutation, and know exactly the mutation of the bacteria and again know the best treatment for that.
It's really fascinating. As you said, you're building this database. It's going to have an inferencing-like impact in that you're going to get what you want to get close enough to the strain to realize what's the right antibiotic to prescribe. As this database gets bigger and as you have more inferencing cases associated with it, how do you see that opening doors? What should we be excited about for what are possibly entirely new medical breakthroughs?
This is my dream. Let me explain why. With this database that we have, and we are growing it, we started to research the use of AI to develop new antibiotics against the super bacterias. Now it's possible to use AI to create new drugs and test it in silico instead of testing humans, et cetera. We are reducing the necessary time from 10 years to just two years. I fully believe that between three and five years at most, we will have new antibiotics to work against or to fight against these super bacterias. I have a dream, Mike, that I want to share with you, please. My dream, and my dream for everyone that is seeing us now, is that in five years, people will no longer die due to bacterial infections.
You spoke about something here, I think that's incredibly important in the healthcare and life sciences industry. The connection from the bedside to clinical research. How do we take real world data from the bedside? How do we turn these global databases into wonderful tools for clinical research? I want to replay what you said just to make sure I got it right. Right now, you take a sample, we find out the right antibiotic very, very quickly. We still have a certain percentage, maybe 30%, as you roll us, like maybe we get down to 30% of bacteria that are still resistant. They're super, they're super bacteria. They're resistant to any antibiotic that's on the market today, likely to turn, you know, likely for somebody that turns septic or, you know, pass away as a result.
You think as a result of this database paired with the life sciences industry, paired with molecular discovery, drug discovery, genomics, it all comes together, we can actually create new precision medicines.
Yeah.
For that particular patient, for that particular strain. I want to make sure this is true, because this is fascinating. This is absolutely fascinating. Even if it's the only strain, the only time we've ever seen that strain, the first time we've ever seen that.
Oh, thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, that is just incredible. Incredibly, incredibly inspiring.
There is something that I really want to say to you. This is one very important reason that we are together with you, with Oracle, because we have the same purpose. I really know that Oracle takes care of health. By the way, your team is amazing. They are together with us helping us to create this kind of solution.
I have to admit, I think when we created the vector database, we didn't think about that use case. You really have taken this thing to somewhere that's just, you know, clinical research, molecular discovery, you know, how fast can we get a molecule to a medicine? How fast, how many lives can we save? You're moving just at an incredible pace because you've done all this in the last couple years. I mean, all this has happened. You saved 2,000 lives just in the last couple years with this vector technology, vectorizing this technology. If you can do that much that quickly, as we look at the next three to five years, specifically, where do you think AI will have the biggest impact on infectious disease care?
First, as we told, to discover new drugs, to have best treatment, et cetera. There is something so new that we started to work. By the way, one of the hospitals that are working with us is here with us. I'm so proud of that. You know, it's a real success history. They are here together with us and with this hospital. We still started to develop not only new, the research of new antibiotics, et cetera, but there is a totally new area. The name is epigenetics. Do you know something about that?
A little bit, but you know a lot more about it than I do. Go ahead.
Epigenetics is related to the, let's say, the cell aging. Not mutations, but small, small change in DNA that this small change could, for example, create cancer and several other diseases. The good thing is that now we know that it's possible to use AI plus DNA sequence vector database, vector search to identify this change. To recommend, for example, few small steps like, oh, you must have a better lifestyle, making exercise and etc. More than it, we started to research the development of new drugs to stop the cell aging process.
You are taking this very same technology, which today is specific to antibiotic resistant bacteria. You think we can detect and predict someone who may advance to a certain form of cancer? We can stop it in its tracks before it even gets there.
By the way, the person that will live 100 years probably is here seeing us.
This is all of the same vector technologies based on the same technology. The ability to vectorize this data and very quickly compare it against massive global data sets is what makes all this possible.
Yes.
Yes.
That's not a story for AI being our data, rather being the fuel for AI. Not sure what is. I certainly thank you on behalf of Oracle, but I also have to thank you on behalf of humanity as well for what you're doing. What you've shared with us is so much more than a technology story. It's just a reminder of the very real outcomes that are possible from AI. I hope that some of the AI naysayers out there in the world heard what you had to say here because reducing death rates, building a foundation for new treatments, improving care, what matters more? Thank you so much again, Paulo. Very, very inspiring.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Okay, what a story, you know, everything you've heard today shows what's possible when AI is built in and not bolted in. Of course, none of it would be possible without all of you. You push us to keep innovating, to solve the hardest problems, and to make AI practical and trusted at enterprise scale. As you explore the next couple days at AI World, I would encourage you to learn from your peers. Meet with our teams, meet with the Oracle teams, and see for yourself what Oracle AI can do for you. I'd like to thank you for challenging us, thank you for trusting us, and thank you for always inspiring us. With all of you and Oracle AI, there really are no limits as to what we can achieve together. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.