APPLICATIONS
Brian Krzanich has spent his career helping bring transformative technologies into the mainstream. Having spent five years as CEO of tech giant Intel, he now serves as CEO of Cerence AI, whose conversational AI and voice technology designed for autos has been embedded in more than 500 million cars from top brands like Audi, Subaru, BYD and Mercedes-Benz. He is leading the firm, which has collaborated with NVIDIA on conversational AI, as it builds“ an interaction layer for physical AI”. As Brian explains, conversational AI is increasingly relevant beyond traditional consumer applications and automotives; it is increasingly being embedded in complex enterprise environments.
Look who’ s talking Talking to AI has become something that many people do every day, whether through chatbots and LLMs or through products like Amazon’ s Alexa.“ Conversational AI allows people and machines to interact through natural language, rather than menus, commands or specialised interfaces,” Brian explains.“ At its core, it’ s about enabling technology to understand human intent and translate that intent into meaningful action.”
Conversational AI products are often used in the home for basic tasks like news report retrieval and playing songs from integrated apps like Spotify. In the car, things are different. Cerence AI has spent more than 25 years solving hard problems in the vehicle, which Brian points out is one of the world’ s most demanding and complex physical AI environments.
He says:“ Our technology has been shipped in more than 525 million vehicles worldwide, giving us a unique perspective on what it takes to deliver trusted AI interaction at global scale in real-world environments. We believe those same capabilities are now critical across manufacturing, industrial automation and robotics.”
84 October 2026