00:00 Bryan

It feels like we were just there uh talking about your IPO. But since then, I mean the AI market has absolutely hit uh uh entirely new gear. I’d love to get your thoughts on what we heard for this uh from this morning for example, Microsoft and OpenAI restructuring their partnership, a really eye-popping valuation. What does that say about tech stocks?

00:33 Mark

Well, I it it you know, I’m not in the business of of stocks as you all are, but I think we’re all observing some of what you’ve all been calling a bit of a bubble. And I think maybe unlike some of the things that have been referred to as bubbles in the past, I think most people are pretty convinced this is a systemic shift in the technology landscape. Um there may be some sense a friend of mine said to me recently, we may be under, excuse me, overestimating the short-term impact and underestimating the long-term impact. I think this is a fairly significant tectonic shift in technology, but how fast it gets adopted and and how companies continue to look at the investments they’re making and what it does for their business is is still a little bit, you know, uncertain at the rate of that change.

01:20 Bryan

But given where the valuations have come on AI Mark, I mean, does that change how you plan for your business? Maybe you want to go out and buy another company uh to improve parts of your business. Do you just say like, look, no guys, we’re not pulling the trigger here at these prices?

01:46 Mark

I’d say for us, we’re we’re we’re a uh in the realm of of M&A when we think about that at all. We tend to think from a perspective of our our own road map. We try to be a very market-driven, customer-driven company. We think about where we think we need to go based on what we’re hearing in the market from our particularly leading and and largest customers about what they need and where they’re going. And then we’re always looking for ways to accelerate that road map by looking at technology acquisition and and pulling something in to accelerate our vision. But in general, I’d say we’re much more focused on kind of listening to what the challenges our customers are facing. And Brian as you said, you know, everybody’s talking about AI, most large companies have pilots or projects, but there has been a little bit of a slowness in adoption, I think. and I think from where our perspective as a security vendor, that’s generally because there’s some risk that they don’t feel completely comfortable with yet.