During a unique keynote kickoff at today’s UiPath FORWARD VI event, the future of AI and data innovation took center stage.

As a part of theCUBE’s event coverage, our industry analysts took a look at the key insights and revelations coming out of the event, as well as offering a glimpse into the big AI questions businesses and society are facing with this major technological advancement defining the data era.

“Just how big and theoretical the [AI] questions we’re going to be grappling with here — this was really center stage because usually, these kinds of keynotes are pushing products,” said theCUBE analyst Rebecca M. Knight (left), recalling the morning’s announcements. 

UiPath Chief Brand Officer Mary Tetlow joined the keynote stage to present the question of whether or not AI is good or bad: Will the world profit from it or will it be destroyed? 

“I mean, this is the major technological advancement of our time, really,” Knight said. “And so setting up this dichotomy is really going to be what we’re going to be talking about for the next few years, but especially these next two days.”

Knight spoke with fellow analysts Dave Vellante (right) and Lisa Martin (center) during our keynote analysis, live at UiPath FORWARD VI, as part of an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed expectations for the event, focusing on UiPath’s evolution beyond its beginnings in robotic processing automation and the playbook for UiPath as it coalesces a string of strategic generative AI acquisitions into a product portfolio. (* Disclosure below.)

Automating the mundane

Automating the mundane is what RPA is all about and that’s how UiPath got started under the visionary leadership of Daniel Dines. Now valued at $9.7 billion, UiPath has brought in Robert Enslin for a bit of “adult supervision,” according to Vellante.

“Rob came out of Google,” Vellante said. “My guess is he was frustrated there because it’s not a sales culture but an engineering culture. At UiPath he’s the perfect compliment to Daniel Dines, who’s a visionary. He’s heads down doing AI with the product teams, and I’m sure he’s got his hands in everything. But Rob has really restructured the go-to-market.”

That’s in line with what UiPath is calling its North Star Playbook, which Vellante dissected in a recent episode of theCUBE’s Breaking Analysis podcast. And the stars are beginning to align for UiPath, though the company still faces broader challenges as industry interest rates continue to impact the market.

“They’ve got a long way to go before they can get back to that $38 billion [valuation after its initial public offering], but they’re in the right spot,” he said. “The big, existential question for companies like UiPath is whether this is a tailwind for them.”

In his recent Breaking Analysis episode, Vellante noted that the company reported annualized recurring revenue of $1.3 billion, up 25% year-over-year. But the problem with early RPA implementations was their narrow use cases, leading to trouble scaling. What UiPath did was go out “and make a bunch of acquisitions and re-platformed everything, not just for the cloud, but they brought in process mining… and natural language processing. They expanded into [these areas] and really built out a horizontal platform,” said Vellante.

Here’s the complete video, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath Forward VI:

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath FORWARD event. UiPath and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE