AI Outcomes

AI Outcomes —the podcast that brings you real-world customer stories and data points on how companies are using artificial intelligence to drive business outcomes. If you’re in B2B sales, consulting, or any role that involves talking to clients about AI—at a business rather than a technical level—then this podcast is for you.

AI Outcomes is a business podcast hosted by Ben Drakes, with 49 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Ben Drakes hosts AI Outcomes, a business show with 49 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Episode #49

  Ep49: Why "Open" AI Models Aren't Free For Enterprise: The $30k a Month Reality | Rickard Hansson

  Aug 14, 202647 minS1

  The subsidised token era is ending and the bill is landing. Rickard Hansson joins Ben Drakes for the first of a new fortnightly AI news strand — no pitch, no sales, just the AI news that matters if you run a business. Why your Claude context window disappears faster than it used to, how Ben accidentally became his own model router, what OpenRouter and Goose actually do, and the uncomfortable truth about "open" models: only the weights are open, and hosting one yourself starts around $30,000 a month. 00:00 Token Maxing Ends 00:59 Summer Catch Up 02:01 Reality Check On Costs 03:12 Claude Pricing Squeeze 06:47 Task Based Model Switching 09:33 OpenRouter And Routing 12:03 Open Models Hosting Myths 15:36 Enterprise Self Hosted LLMs 18:20 Escaping Walled Gardens 22:37 Goose Harness Vs OpenRouter 23:43 Claude Memory Myth 26:20 Probabilistic vs Deterministic 28:10 Claude Design IP Fears 31:33 Model Commoditisation Distillation 32:56 Enterprise Workflow Moat 34:39 Chip Race GPUs to NPUs 40:22 Pricing Politics Predictions 45:00 Wrap Up and Where to Find Rickard Hansson https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickardh/ Ben Drakes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-drakes/ Website: https://bendrakes.com

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #48

  KPMG's Withdrawn AI Report: What UBS, the NHS and TfL Disputed | with Ben Pickett Ep48

  Jul 7, 202642 minS1

  KPMG withdrew its flagship agentic AI report after UBS, NHS Greater Manchester, Swiss Federal Railways and Transport for London disputed case studies about them, and researchers found only 5 of its 45 citations matched their sources. Not an AI problem. Not a people problem. A process problem. Ben Pickett is Co-Founder and COO of Swa, a former Global Director of Site Reliability Engineering at Nike, and writer of Enterprise Field Notes, the newsletter on why most companies are bad at buying and implementing AI. In this episode we get into what the KPMG story really teaches, and it is not "AI is unreliable." 00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:52 Ben and Newsletter Origin 04:29 KPMG Report Retraction 07:10 Fixing AI Workflows 13:49 Cross Checking Models 16:11 Personas and Hard Stops 19:43 Nike to AI Strategy 22:56 Jobs and AI Speed 26:57 Adoption Tips and Training 31:25 AI Washing and Costs 35:16 Smart Spend Case Studies 39:47 Where to Find Ben 40:42 Final Advice and Wrap Ben Pickett's: Enterprise Field Notes newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7444358963539828736 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpick/ Listener hub: https://benpickett.com/aioutcomes AI scorecard + try Swa: https://swa-ai.com/aioutcomes KPMG article (with sources): https://medium.com/@goshawk_55282/kpmg-forgot-to-check-its-own-work-dcdb0ebffd31 Walmart blueprint article: https://medium.com/@goshawk_55282/what-walmart-understood-that-the-other-95-didnt-16c75da2ac15 Uber article: https://medium.com/@goshawk_55282/dear-andrew-coo-of-uber-3f3c968cfe08 News coverage of the KPMG story: https://www.finance-monthly.com/kpmg-ai-report-hallucinations-ubs-nhs-transport-for-london/ https://www.internationalaccountingbulletin.com/news/kpmg-drops-ai-report-after-false-case-studies-exposed/ Connect with Ben Drakes: Website: https://bendrakes.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-drakes Newsletter: https://substack.com/@bendrakes Book a call: https://calendly.com/bendrakes/30min

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #47

  Can SaaS Survive AI? Inside SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow & NVIDIA | Thomas Odenwald | Ep47

  Jun 25, 202644 minS1

  The biggest SaaS giants are scrambling to survive the AI era. Ben Drakes sits down with Thomas Odenwald, ex-SAP and ex-HPE, to ask the question every enterprise leader is quietly asking: can SaaS survive AI? They unpack how SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and NVIDIA are each making their move, who really owns the new "control plane" for enterprise AI, why business AI still lives or dies on determinism, and what the Mythos and Fable 5 shutdown reveals about the risk of relying on US frontier models. If you lead, sell, or buy enterprise technology, this is the map of where the value is shifting. Chapters: 00:00 AI Disrupts SaaS Giants 01:09 What Year of Inference Means 03:18 Enterprise AI Needs Determinism 04:53 Salesforce Agentforce Push 07:39 SAP Joule and ServiceNow Now Assist 12:21 Control Plane Battle Slack Copilot 18:37 ERP Reality and Agent Workflows 26:23 NVIDIA and Model Partnerships 28:10 Token Costs and Enterprise ROI 32:49 Mythos Fable 5 Security Shock 37:34 Geopolitics and Europe Wake Up 42:59 Wrap Up and Next Steps Discover EQ You x AI, Ben's program for turning the AI tools your team already has into qualified pipeline: https://bendrakes.com Subscribe for more straight-talking conversations on enterprise AI outcomes. #AI #EnterpriseAI #SaaS #SAP #Salesforce #ServiceNow #NVIDIA #Agentforce

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #46

  Ep46 Two AI Extinction Moments Coming for Enterprise Sales | EQ You × AI

  May 26, 202639 minS1

  <p>92% of companies are increasing AI investment. 1% of their leaders think they're ready to deploy it.<br/>That's the AI readiness gap. And it's about to claim two casualties in enterprise sales.<br/>In this solo episode, Ben breaks down the two extinction moments coming for sales teams in 2026. The CRO who buys an AI tool but never embeds the workflow. And the seller who refuses to use the AI to bring real value to the customer. Both extinctions are avoidable. Both are already happening.<br/>He also introduces the rebrand. EQ You × AI. The program for revenue leaders and s...

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #45

  AI Compresses, Humans Decide–Why Your Brain Still Beats AI at Real Decisions | Gini Holden | Ep45

  Apr 30, 202651 minS1

  <p>Most boardrooms are buying AI like they're buying a grand piano and announcing they've got a concert hall. They've skipped the hard part: humans don't decide logically–they decide cognitively.<br/><br/>In Episode 45 of the AI Outcomes Podcast, Ben Drakes is joined by Virginia (Gini) Holden–the show's first cognitive strategist–to unpack what most AI strategy gets wrong. Our brains are not logical processing units. They're archeological artifacts: predictive engines layered with millions of years of heuristics, group-value programs and tacit knowledge that no AI is trained to handle.<br/><br/>Gini explains why "AI compresses and routes...

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on AI Outcomes. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.