Toast has big plans for AI
…and, uh, AI has big plans for us.
This started as a post about Toast’s evolving AI but ended with some existential questions about the future of work in hospitality and beyond. There’s always a restaurant angle! -KH
In a dramatic stock market moment earlier this month, software companies lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value. Why? Investors are worried that rapid developments in artificial intelligence will disrupt companies from Adobe to Expedia to LegalZoom. At the same time, AI industry insiders are warning — with varying degrees of urgency — of major, life-altering shifts coming to the way we work.
During a Thursday earnings call for Toast, the restaurant point of sale and payments provider whose stock has fallen almost 50 percent from a summer high, an analyst asked the company’s leader to address AI disruption, which he called “the elephant in the room.: Analysts used to talk about Toast as a software company, he said. Is the 14-year-old company under threat from new technology?
Toast’s answer? Don’t worry! We got this.
“We’re the most important piece of technology restaurateurs use around their business,” CEO Aman Narang answered. “I look at AI as an opportunity for Toast to lean in and drive innovation and impact for our customers versus being a risk to the business.”