The ROI of AI
Stanford Graduate School of Business, March 2026
A talk on why enterprise AI spending so rarely turns into measurable return. Its central idea, the AI Leverage Curve, is that the higher the decision AI supports, the higher the return.
Vibhu
Narwekar
Founder and CEO of a frontier AI lab and enterprise AI company in stealth mode. Former Head of AI Products at Microsoft.
Vibhu Narwekar is the founder and CEO of a frontier AI lab and enterprise AI company in stealth mode, based in New York.
From 2020 to 2025 he was Head of AI Products at Microsoft, where he helped launch the first enterprise Copilots and AI agents and served on the Microsoft AI Council. Earlier he was a management consultant at Monitor and L.E.K., worked at Verizon and Yahoo, and began his career as an engineer at Siemens.
He speaks on enterprise AI, the return on AI investment, pricing, and the future of work, and has spoken at Stanford Graduate School of Business every year since 2023.
On stage
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Vibhu Narwekar on stage at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. -
AI Innovation Spotlight Talk
Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2025
A talk at Stanford on how the next generation of AI is reshaping industries, opening new markets and changing established business models, and what that means for leaders and the future of work, followed by a Jeffersonian dinner with Stanford students and alumni.
LinkedIn post on the AI Innovation Spotlight Talk at Stanford
Vibhu Narwekar on stage at Stanford. 
With Sarah Soule, who became Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business in June 2025. 
Jeffersonian dinner with Stanford students and alumni. -
With Noam Brown of OpenAI at Nvidia GTC
Nvidia GTC, 2025
A conversation with OpenAI researcher Noam Brown, one of the people behind advanced reasoning models, at Nvidia's GTC conference.
Vibhu Narwekar with Noam Brown of OpenAI at Nvidia GTC. -
Neural or Nothing: Rewiring Business for the AI Age
Manhattan Venture Partners Outlook 2025, moderated by Bloomberg Intelligence, January 2025
A 60-minute panel on enterprise AI beyond the hype, with George Mathew of Insight Partners, Michael Martin of RapidSOS, Don Burnette of Kodiak and Santosh Rao of Manhattan Venture Partners, moderated by Sunil Rajgopal of Bloomberg Intelligence and distributed through Bloomberg's terminal network. He argued that the real gap in AI is monetization, not model quality, and that most enterprises are still moving too slowly, using AI to cut costs when the larger gains are in productivity and new revenue. On the wider economy, he said AI could add up to $7 trillion to global GDP over the next decade and would transform jobs more than eliminate them. He had told an analyst about two years earlier that large language models would be hard to differentiate and to monetize profitably, a prediction he returned to in January 2025 after DeepSeek's release.
Manhattan Venture Partners' report on the panel, with his remarks Watch the recording of the Neural or Nothing panel Manhattan Venture Partners Outlook Series listing LinkedIn post on the Neural or Nothing panel LinkedIn post on his prediction that AI models would be hard to differentiate and monetize
Vibhu Narwekar speaking on the Neural or Nothing panel. -
AI and the Future of Everything: Are You Ready?
Stanford Graduate School of Business, March 2024
A talk on the AI-driven future: AI's upside and its risks, its impact on the future of work, and the next frontiers of AGI development. The most popular part was his AI rap song. Given at a Stanford gathering of more than 500 students, Stanford GSB alumni and LEAD participants from over 60 countries.
LinkedIn post on the AI and the Future of Everything talk at Stanford LinkedIn post on the week at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Vibhu Narwekar presenting at Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2024. -
Super AI ML Summit NYC
New York, 5 September 2024
Speaker at Supermomos's invite-only AI, ML and data summit, a full-day event near Bryant Park, alongside leaders from NEA, Insight Partners, AWS, Salesforce, the United Nations and the City of New York.
Speaker listing on the summit site Super AI ML Summit NYC event page Featured-speaker listing in the Pioneering Minds newsletter
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Unlocking the Future, with Harvard Business Review
Harvard University, April 2024
Took part in Harvard Business Review's Unlocking the Future event at Harvard University, a day of discussions on transformative technologies and AI.
LinkedIn post on Harvard Business Review's Unlocking the Future event
Vibhu Narwekar at Harvard Business Review's Unlocking the Future event. -
The future of work and generative AI
Stanford Graduate School of Business, March 2023
A talk at Stanford Graduate School of Business on two topics: the future of work, and generative AI and large language models.
LinkedIn post on the future of work and generative AI talks at Stanford
Vibhu Narwekar speaking at Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2023. -
Generative AI and the next era of innovation
Stanford Graduate School of Business, 15 March 2023
Hosted a Jeffersonian dinner, a single-conversation dinner discussion, on the role of generative AI and large language models in shaping the next era of innovation. It took place the day after GPT-4 was released.
About
- Now
- Founder and CEO of a frontier AI lab and enterprise AI company in stealth mode, New York
- Before
- Head of AI Products, Microsoft (2020 to 2025). Member of the Microsoft AI Council. Management consulting at Monitor and L.E.K. Verizon and Yahoo. Engineering at Siemens.
- Education
- MBA, Duke University Fuqua School of Business. Stanford LEAD, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Systems, IIT Delhi.
- Speaks on
- Enterprise AI, the return on AI investment, pricing, the future of work
- Based in
- New York and the San Francisco Bay Area
Who is Vibhu Narwekar?
Vibhu Narwekar is the founder and CEO of a frontier AI lab and enterprise AI company in stealth mode and the former Head of AI Products at Microsoft. He holds an MBA from Duke University and completed Stanford LEAD at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
What shaped him
Interpersonal Dynamics, the Stanford Graduate School of Business course better known as Touchy Feely and one of the most popular the school has ever taught, has profoundly shaped his professional and personal relationships. He credits Carole Robin, who led it, and recommends Connect, the book she co-wrote on its ideas.
Outside work
He has danced salsa and bachata for more than 15 years, is a former table tennis champion, and flies drones. He has also been a photographer of nature, street scenes and portraits, a painter, and a pianist. He is a world traveler and a big foodie.
More posts
- At Stanford Graduate School of Business in March 2023, with professors Jeffrey Pfeffer, Baba Shiv, Jesper Sorensen and Peter DeMarzo. LinkedIn post on meeting the Stanford professors
- Raising Animal Spirits, a dinner in New York hosted by Matthew Sutton of Harvard Business School, 2024. LinkedIn post on the Raising Animal Spirits dinner
- A dinner in New York with Maciej Kraus, Partner at Movens Capital. Maciej Kraus's LinkedIn post about the evening
More on LinkedIn.