Four levels of GenAI transformation

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With extensive experience in enterprise technology and investments, Anil Cheriyan (Board Member for the Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian; Digital AI Leader, and Legendary CIO) has turned his attention to generative AI. 

As this technology sweeps across the digital landscape like a tidal wave, Anil is focused on the necessity of strategy and talent to enable organisations to adopt GenAI tools, integrate it into high-impact use cases, and leverage it to position themselves at the peak of their industries. 

He’s coming to share his experience at DeepFest 2025. So we caught up with him to find out what it is about GenAI that’s captured his interest, and how he thinks GenAI investors will approach emerging startups in this space in the coming months and years. 

What's the most amazing thing you've seen GenAI do in the last year or so?

“GenAI has taken off in 2024. I know in most of 2023 we were debating whether it was all just hype or if it’s reality. In a recent panel discussion with some senior technology leaders that I moderated, I asked the question on hype versus reality, and real examples of scalable business value – and I was surprised by how many real examples were quoted. 

“Customer experience and employee experience examples were the main examples. For example, one leader had launched several GenAI agents for use in employee hiring and onboarding. The integration of ‘answers’ across multiple employee systems to streamline human-assisted hire to retire processes was a real concrete example.”

If you could tell all organisations to do just one thing to ready themselves for a future with GenAI, what would it be?

“It’s hard to boil it down to one thing – because I think there are five main areas one needs to manage with GenAI. They are:

• Business value creation
• Data readiness
• Risk
• Talent
• Expense management

“The one thing I would say is focus on starting small, and iterate and build value. Don’t get stuck on meaningless POCs that will never be scalable, overly ambitious scenarios that AI is just not ready for, or where you just don’t have the data available. Once you start small and iterate and start driving value – build on creating capability and competence in managing the five main areas mentioned above.” 

In an ideal world where nothing ever goes wrong - what could life look like in the future for people leveraging this technology?

“In the ideal world every human being will have a personalised, always learning, humanoid bot that assists them in every task that the human needs to perform. Whether it’s solving complex problems, doing mundane chores, or just consuming entertainment, there will be a fully functional AI bot that will be at your service. This isn’t too far away as we are now beginning to see multi-modal models that integrate video, text, music, etc. 

“Integrating these models with full functional humanoid bots will be the next challenge.”

And on a more practical note; with so many AI startups coming to the global market, how can investors determine which ones are worth backing?

“I believe the world of GenAI has transformed the computing industry in four levels. 

“At the base level we have infrastructure transformation – with companies such as NVidia creating extremely powerful GenAI based hardware. 

“The next layer is the Large Language Model space – or at least the core AI modelling using language or multi-model models with parameters across multiple expertise domains. 

“The third layer is the data engineering layer – connecting these models to available data sources. 

“The fourth layer is the industry specific application layer that focuses on streamlining or creating human assisted processes.  

“The bottom two layers are capital intensive – while the top two layers are human expertise intensive. Venture firms are more likely to focus on investing in startups in the top two layers.”

Finally, what are you most looking forward to at DeepFest 2025?

“I was at DeepFest 2024 and was amazed at the energy and enthusiasm from all the participants. It was certainly early stages in investing in this amazing new technology for companies in this part of the world. 

“In 2025 I would like to see how the market has matured, how global companies have expanded in this area, and how the many startups have progressed in their own globalisation. It will certainly be a high octane event!” 

Connect with Anil Cheriyan on LinkedIn. Register now to attend DeepFest 2025 and learn directly from Anil and other leading minds in AI.