AI strategy breaks if you assume today’s models will still be the right models when your deployment ships.
At our 19th Annual Sierra Ventures CXO Summit (2024), Mark Fernandes sat down with Jason Clinton to discuss what security and technology leaders are learning as AI moves from pilots to production environments.
Across large organizations, one theme is clear: AI adoption is changing how teams plan infrastructure, manage risk, and approach long-term architectural decisions.
Planning for model evolution
“If you build your company’s AI strategy around models that exist today, by the time your project is finished, there will be a 4× more powerful model available in the marketplace.”
This is shifting how teams design systems. Flexibility matters more than optimization around any single model generation.
Security workflows are improving with AI
Large language models are already helping teams analyze signals faster, test hypotheses earlier, and support security review processes across increasingly complex environments.
Enterprise governance matters early
As organizations adopt AI internally, questions around privacy controls, access boundaries, and deployment architecture become central. Many teams are prioritizing these foundations earlier than in past platform transitions.
Software quality opportunities
As AI becomes more integrated into development workflows, there is growing potential to identify issues earlier in the lifecycle and improve reliability before software reaches production.
One especially useful takeaway from the discussion was how quickly security organizations themselves are evolving alongside AI adoption. Teams are rapidly building new capabilities as deployment moves from experimentation to enterprise-scale use.
Conversations like this are part of why we bring together CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and engineering leaders each year at the Sierra Ventures CXO Summit. The goal is simple: create space for operators to share what is actually working inside production environments today.
If you are building or deploying AI in the enterprise, this conversation offers a practical view into how security leaders are thinking about the shift.
