Miro: AI Integrated into Employee Training Budget

Miro Integrates AI into Professional Training

Andrey Khusid, co-founder and CEO of Miro, recently emphasized the importance of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) spending into employee training budgets. "Our learning and development (L&D) budget is an unlimited tool," he stated, insisting that the company is heavily investing in subscriptions to AI tools to enhance its employees' skills.

The adoption of AI is accelerating, but it raises questions about the return on investment (ROI) of this technology. Many companies are still hesitant to invest in costly subscriptions, wondering if they are worth it. Miro, however, has chosen a different approach.

A Bold Investment Strategy

Khusid explained that Miro provides its employees with virtually unlimited access to the latest AI tools to accelerate their learning and work. This approach is made possible by the company's profitability since 2016. Miro has raised $476 million to date and does not plan to raise additional capital.

He views these expenditures as an essential part of traditional professional training. Rather than asking employees to learn on their own time or pay out of pocket, Miro wants this experimentation to occur within the company as a collective effort. Khusid added that there should always be a clear business case for purchasing any tool.

AI as a Core Skill

Miro's strategy aligns with a broader shift in the tech sector, where the adoption of AI is moving from an option to an expectation. A new study from the engineering intelligence platform Jellyfish, based on data from over 700 companies, revealed that 64% of them now produce the majority of their code with the help of AI. Tech giants like Google are encouraging their employees to use AI tools more aggressively, and Microsoft has begun linking AI usage to performance evaluations.

The Importance of Rapid Innovation

Khusid believes that many leaders are asking the wrong question regarding the ROI of AI. Instead of evaluating tools based on individual productivity gains or subscription costs, he stated that Miro tries to focus on the overall speed of the company. The company tracks projects through a "discover, define, deliver" process and measures the time taken to move from one stage to the next. The goal is to compress this timeline as much as possible.

"The most important metric from my perspective is the velocity of innovation," Khusid said. "If you are not innovating quickly enough, you are out of the game." He clarified that he does not think the way companies are using AI today is necessarily the final state. He indicated that it will take at least until the end of this year, if not next year, to see what a work environment shaped by these tools truly looks like.

For now, he added, Miro is already seeing time savings in engineering, product, and design areas. However, this is not always the case. Better tools speed up code generation, he said, but code reviews can still slow down projects. "Humans have to read it," Khusid emphasized. At least for now.