Autodesk (ADSK) Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference summary

AI strategy and product innovation

• AI is being leveraged to automate tedious tasks, accelerate workflows, and lower barriers to using complex design software, expanding the potential user base.

• The AI Lab, established in 2018, focuses on industry-specific AI, with notable features like Auto Constrain in Fusion showing rapid adoption and improvement cycles.

• AI features are driving a shift toward a consumption-based business model, with high customer acceptance and increased product usage.

• The AI roadmap follows a continuum from feature automation (small models) to workflow and system automation (larger models), with monetization evolving from subscription to consumption as compute needs grow.

• Future plans include leveraging historical project data, dynamic user interfaces, and expanding generative and predictive AI capabilities to further transform workflows.

Competitive positioning and industry leadership

• Significant lead in AI for design, evidenced by hundreds of scientific publications and a robust feedback loop with customers.

• Deep industry expertise, proprietary data, and advanced infrastructure make it difficult for new entrants or hyperscalers to compete at scale.

• Traditional competitors are only now building AI capabilities, while the company has an eight-year head start.

• Internal infrastructure and operational models for AI are highly optimized, with custom solutions outperforming standard cloud offerings.

• Even well-funded competitors would need four to five years to reach current capability levels.

Data, cloud transition, and enabling technologies

• Cloud adoption and granular data organization are prerequisites for effective AI deployment and workflow transformation.

• Ongoing multi-year journey to break down complex project data into elemental components, enabling efficient collaboration and automation.

• Progress is visible through customer examples and will be further highlighted at upcoming Autodesk University events.