Irish tech company Intercom is to invest an extra $94 million in artificial intelligence as part of plans to become the biggest player in the market, the group’s chief executive Eoghan McCabe has told staff.
Mr McCabe told staff the targets would require more productivity from them, and that “plans are in motion” to address “mediocrity” in some aspects of the business.‘I lost €1,000 in cash on the way to the bank to lodge it. Someone in Dún Laoghaire had a big win that day’“I want you to know how seriously we’re taking our ambition to win here,” he said. “And also to have context for the continued push on productivity and our talent bar that you will see from us over the next while.
On the detail of the investment, Mr McCabe said he expects that, “in time”, AI will “do all knowledge work”, but that it will start by doing “the most repetitive knowledge work first”. “This is why there are many companies chasing this opportunity aggressively. From the biggest, like Salesforce and Zendesk, to the smaller companies like Ada, Forethought, and about 50 others.
This extra spend of $94 million will cover an increase in the group’s machine learning team headcount from 19 to 72 by the end of next year. “This will require an epic lift to make happen, but will dramatically increase our ability to ship great AI tech fast,” he said. “With stronger growth, which I expect and which we’re playing for, we’ll break even again much sooner or get even more aggressive with our investments,” he said.