AI in Business: Investments and Opportunities for Value Creation

In this moderated discussion, Stanford GSB Professor Haim Mendelson is joined by guest speaker Michael Marks. Marks, a founding managing partner of Celesta Capital, is a seasoned executive with more than 40 years of experience leading and transforming tech companies. Together, they explore how AI is impacting the business world today and how executives and investors are thinking about the opportunities for AI to drive value creation. The discussion covers a range of topics, including Marks’ approach to evaluating new companies, examples of promising startups developing innovative solutions, and key concerns, such as how to obtain high-quality data to train AI models. This event is part of the Value Chain Innovation Speaker Series and is organized by the Value Chain Innovation Initiative. The series explores how emerging technologies are reshaping business models, value chains, and consumer preferences. Each one-hour event features a dynamic conversation led by Professor Haim Mendelson, faculty director of VCII, with one or more leading innovators in the field. Visit the VCII Events page at goto.stanford.edu/vcii-events for a list of upcoming events and to access past event recordings. –––––– 00:00 Introduction 01:35 Michael’s business journey 02:25 About Celesta Capital 04:15 Staying on top of tech innovation 05:20 Evaluating a new technology 06:25 Evaluating a new company’s leadership 08:05 About Intel and Lip-Bu Tan 10:45 Is AI overhyped? 13:41 AI for medical diagnostics (White Rabbit) 16:40 Will AI replace human professionals? 19:05 Getting data to train the system 19:55 Same technology used in adjacent areas? 20:44 Innovation in hardware design 25:13 Startup examples: Eliyan, Stathera 28:54 Defense & security applications (Percipient) 33:47 Q&A: Sectors with faster AI adoption 36:12 Q&A: Access to training data 38:35 Q&A: Addressing “garbage” in datasets 41:18 Q&A: Required amount of training data 42:05 Q&A: Missed investment opportunities 44:50 Q&A: Diagnostics vs. therapeutics investments 46:33 Q&A: Availability of software talent 49:26 Q&A: Declining cost of foundation models 52:29 Q&A: How to compete with tech giants 54:38 Preview of next event 55:47 Closing remarks