In the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, artificial intelligence is often marketed as a revolutionary force of autonomy and “whiz-bang” reasoning. But according to two top tech CEOs, the customers actually paying the bills—like a heavy equipment manufacturer in the Midwest—are asking the tech industry to shut up about the hype and show them the receipts.
During a Fortune Brainstorm AI panel earlier this month, two tech executives from multibillion-dollar market cap companies got real with Fortune‘s Allie Garfinkle. Freshworks CEO Dennis Woodside and Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy dismantled the current AI narrative, arguing that the gap between what developers find “sexy” and what businesses actually need is widening.
Woodside anchored his argument with a specific example from his own client base: Vermeer, a family-owned company in Iowa that has been building wood chippers and other agricultural equipment for a century. Despite having 5,000 employees and complex operations, he said, Vermeer has zero interest in the Silicon Valley hype cycle.
“They don’t necessarily care about the latest thing that we’re pushing in Silicon Valley,” Woodside said. “They need results, they need to grow their business, they need to serve their customers.”
