Salesforce marked the opening day of its new AI centre in London on Tuesday with a free training event attended by more than a hundred software developers and administrators.
The event was part of the centre’s ‘AI Now Tour,’ designed to equip developers from different industries with the skills needed to build future of gen AI applications.
The initiative supports the company’s commitment to train 100,000 developers worldwide. Attendees at the event came from automotive, financial services, retail, customer goods, travel hospitality health & life sciences and insurance.
Speaking about the Salesforce AI centre’s events and content strategy, its new head – Paul O’Sullivan – who is also the CRM giant’s UK&I CTO – told TechInformed that the intention was to run a series of “deep industry events” that took a sector-specific approach, as well as cross industry events that may uncover new business models.
“Cross industry opportunities are one of the key things I keep talking about in the world of AI. Take the automative industry for instance – the future of self-driving cars and the potential that it has will also play a role not just in automative and OEM space but also in insurance space – because, in the future, who do you insure? The driver? The manufacturer of the car? Or the engineer that wrote the algorithm that supports the car…”
“We are going to use this space to bring some of that thought leadership together and look at cross industry collaboration and some new business models for some of our customers as well.”
While developer training places on its AI course are now oversubscribed until the end of this September, O’Sullivan stressed that opportunities to visit to the centre – which takes up 14,000 sq. ft of floor space over one level of the Blue Fin building near London’s Waterloo – are not just restricted to Salesforce customers, “just businesses interested in exploring and learning and developing whatever their AI data ambition is.”
Through partnerships with business growth agencies such as London & Partners O’Sullivan also hopes the centre will be able to extend training opportunities to the city’s universities and supporters of its apprenticeship programmes.
“We want to continue to leverage the relationships we’ve got to help the next generation – and not just those on a science track but also art and design students and future creatives too.”
The new AI centre – part of Salesforce’s $4bn investment in the UK over the next five years – is situated next to iconic London buildings such as the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
The opening was attended by leading UK business and industry figures including Howard Dawber, the deputy mayor of London for Business and Growth, and Janet Coyle CBE, managing director of Grow London at London & Partners.