Reimagining urban infrastructure with AI and Autodesk

Today on Equity, we’re taking you to Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest, where Rebecca Bellan caught up with Dara Treseder, Chief Marketing Officer at Autodesk, and Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose, to discuss how technology is transforming urban spaces and building the cities of the future. The panel dug into how cities today are using AI to improve traffic and safety, why digital twins can help make cities more resilient to climate disasters, and how cities can integrate data centers into the fabric of their urban landscapes, among other topics. It’s a timely discussion, especially in the wake of Autodesk laying off roughly 1350 workers—about 9% of their staff—following a restructuring to focus on cloud and AI initiatives. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Ha?

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.

• 0:17Rebecca Bellan?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Rebecca Beland, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Today, we're taking you to Austin, Texas, where I moderated a panel at South by Southwest about how technology is transforming urban spaces and building the cities of the future. I spoke to Dara Tresider, Chief Marketing Officer at Autodesk, and Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose, about how cities today are using AI to improve traffic and safety, why digital twins can help make cities more resilient to climate disasters, and how cities can integrate data centers into the fabric of their urban landscapes and more. It was an interesting discussion, particularly in the aftermath of Autodesk laying off roughly

• 1:00Rebecca Bellan?

  1,350 workers, or about 9% of their staff, a couple of weeks ago, as the company restructures to focus on its cloud and AI needs. So let's take a listen.

• 1:14Rebecca Bellan?

  Good morning.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  I know, we gotta get some energy into this crowd. How's everyone doing? Woo, yes, all right.

• 1:22Rebecca Bellan?

  When we talk about smart cities, sustainable cities, this is something that we've been, at least smart cities, we've been talking about for at least 15 years. Give us a little bit of a history lesson before we dive into the future. So what would have been considered innovative like a decade ago, do you think?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. We're still trying to implement things like a Salesforce CRM that might have been obvious a decade or more ago. So in some ways, I think government continues to be behind because we don't have big R and D budgets or large technical teams that can always be updating the latest and greatest technology. But I do think, and I don't want to get too far ahead in our conversation here, I think some of the newer AI applications give us an opportunity to leapfrog and not have to necessarily rebuild all of those legacy systems, but really think about a very different way of delivering city services. And I know we'll get deeper into that in the conversation.

• 2:17Rebecca Bellan?

  You know, you're San Jose mayor, you're in Silicon Valley. I'm sure you get approached all the time by startups that want to implement their tech. What is kind of the bar that needs to be hit for a technology to be deployed in your city?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so traditionally, the answer to that question would be procurement, which is the bane of everyone's existence. It takes like 18 months to run the gauntlet and hopefully get approved and get that purchase order in and then implement. And then you got to update the contract and it's a whole mess. And look, that still exists and I think there's an opportunity, significant opportunity to reform that process. We're starting to do more, piggyback off of other jurisdictions that have already procured a technology, just to streamline things. But when it comes to newer technologies, AI applications, our city, and I'm really proud of our team for doing this, started in a very scrappy way, connecting with other cities

• 3:13Speaker 02

  that were interested in AI innovation. It started with just a monthly Zoom meeting where about 15, 20 cities were coming together and just sharing best practices, saying, what tools are you using? How's it going? What are you learning? And it has evolved in, I kid you not, just about a year's time from this informal monthly Zoom with a dozen or so cities to over 600 public agencies convened into what we now call the Gov AI Coalition. We just had our first in-person gathering in downtown San Jose. And we have an entire set of frameworks and infrastructure for any public agency that wants to use AI,

• 3:57Speaker 02

  from vendor registries to incident response plans, AI policy manuals. This space is moving very quickly, but the spirit of it is for cities to be able to quickly pick up and pilot AI tools across any department in a city, county, other jurisdiction, share learnings and do it in a way that is safe because we have built out protocols and frameworks for those agencies to think about which vendors they use, which questions to ask, how to Protect people's privacy, data retention policies, all of these things that those of you in the tech world are very familiar with, but are newer for many of us in the public sector.

• 4:35Rebecca Bellan?

  Hmm. So when we talk about AI tools, I mean, AI is everywhere, right? Everything's being AI-ified. Autodesk has been around for ages, but you're really digging into your own AI tools. What are some that you're seeing cities use a lot today?

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So first of all, Autodesk is a technology company, and our software is used to design and make the world around us, whether it's the buildings we live in, work in, or it is the movies and games we love, other products we rely on. So our AI technology is being used by cities as they design and address some of the most pressing challenges. There are not enough people, time, or money for cities to build or rebuild all of the infrastructure that is required. And there's increasing pressure on cities to address this. And so how do you, when you don't have enough money, you don't have enough people, and you don't have enough time, this is where technology really steps in. And we are seeing cities use our technology,

• 5:32Speaker 03

  whether it is around increasing resiliency as they face increasing climate crises and natural disasters. We're seeing cities use it around building more sustainable infrastructure to really improve the livability of the communities. And we're also seeing cities really using technology as a way to make their areas more attractive. There is a skills shortage. And so as cities compete for where people choose to live and work, really having technology at the heart of it is an important way.

• 6:01Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, and I want to get into some of those examples in a bit. But Mayor Mahan, you said that you're talking to mayors all the time. You have this big consortium. What are other cities prioritizing when it comes, is it climate resilience? Or, I mean, in California, certainly climate resilience would be big, but I'll let you speak to that. Is it housing, transpo?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it kind of runs the gamut. I think you always have to ask when, so we're talking a lot these days about how can AI improve the delivery of government services and make government more productive, which is a concept worth pausing on for a moment. If you go back to the 1970s and you look at the last, say, 50 Years of innovation and productivity gains in the private sector. Productivity has grown at an average rate of over 2% per year. In the public sector, about half a percent. So the private sector has been getting more productive at a rate four times faster than the public sector, which means for a given unit of capital or labor, you get a heck of a lot more because there's a compounding nature to that.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  So how can we take new tools to deliver existing services in a better, more efficient, more responsive, more personalized way? What are the kinds of superpowers that AI might give us? So I'll give you just one. I know we're going to talk about different use cases here, but just one very simple example, and you don't need fancy. This is not an LLM application, but just bus route optimization and timing, right? Pretty straightforward. We want to encourage people. We talk about climate risk and sustainability. We want to encourage people to get out of their single occupancy vehicle and hop on a bus more efficient. What's one of the biggest impediments? Well, it's frequency and it's the speed of those services.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  We have in the last year piloting AI tools on two of our bus routes reduced the likelihood of one of our public buses hitting a red light by 50% and speeding up overall route times by about 25%. So you were increasing that throughput, making a smoother, more efficient ride and essentially changing incentives. People are like, wow, hopping on the bus actually will get me to work faster. That's just one example of where we can take a public service we've provided. Public transit has been around over 100 years in our country, but we're making it better using new tools.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  I love that example because it's making me think about one of our customers outside the United States in Bogota, Colombia, who they are using our technology to create a 3D model of transportation. And we use that to reduce commute times by a third and reduce construction waste by a quarter. So it's that like, how can we leverage technology? And it's exciting because we're seeing innovative cities, right? Like San Jose, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. But we're also seeing this on a global scale. And so I think as cities around the world struggle and rest. So with how do we better serve our constituents? Technology is really at the heart of how you start to apply this in real time to address the issues that are top of mind.

• 8:56Rebecca Bellan?

  How long ago was that Bogota revamp?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Oh, this is something we were working with them just a few years ago. And it's still very much in process.

• 9:03Rebecca Bellan?

  I've been there. Their bus routes are, they're pretty fast.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  That's so that and

• 9:06Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, they pack them on, they keep them going.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Technology, right? And it wasn't the case, but having that 3D model allowed you to kind of model and simulate what is needed and then adjust to be able to ensure that you can actually improve the transportation for the citizens.

• 9:19Rebecca Bellan?

  So for that one, was it, was it a simulation or did you build a digital twin or is?

• 9:22Speaker 03

  A 3D model. So a 3D model of the transportation system. Think of it like a virtual copy, right, of a real world system that you can then kind of simulate and adjust things. And the way I like to think about it is you make mistakes on the computer, so you get it right in real life.

• 9:36Rebecca Bellan?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, we see that I cover a lot of robot taxis and we see that a lot of the testing is done in simulation. First, because there's a lot of risk when you put self-driving vehicles on the road. Would you say that 3D models, like, is this the bread and butter of Autodesk right now? Is this something that a lot of cities are using and is it for transportation the most to ensure that things are moving quickly? You've got bus routes in the right places. You have space for green spaces as well.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. So 3D models, right, there are 3D models, there are digital twins. This is very much becoming the standard. You want to have that virtual copy and it's not only for transportation systems. Just 30 miles from here in San Marcos, Texas. That's a city that is in one of the most flood prone areas in the United States. In 2017, there was a flood that devastated the community. So as you can imagine, the city of San Marcos is thinking, how can we address this and prevent this from happening again? Or if it happens again, how do we make sure we're better prepared to take care of our constituents? Working with Autodesk Technology have worked to build a 3D model of the storm drain network

• 10:43Speaker 03

  to understand where are some of the problem areas that we need to allocate our resources to to ensure that we can mitigate any risks should a flood occur in the future. And really doing some of that scenario planning. So we are seeing That happened with cities, with infrastructure, transportation systems, and even with, obviously, buildings and landmarks as well.

• 11:04Rebecca Bellan?

  Is this something you're doing in San Jose as well?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, just to build on that example, I think it's a great one. Obviously, with the tragic fires in Los Angeles, we're thinking a lot about whether or not we are as prepared as we can be for fire risk. California fires, floods, earthquakes, right? One of the things we're exploring now with our public university, San Jose State, which happens to be across the street from City Hall, is better monitoring and modeling of vegetation, fuel load, you might call it, and basically the buildup of vegetation around the wildland urban interface of the city. We are surrounded by dense, dry vegetation that could produce similar, if the wind directions are not favorable for us, could produce similar risk profiles.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  And just trying to better understand across a patchwork of jurisdictions. You have private property owners, state land, county land, city land. We don't always coordinate. One of our big challenges in government is how decentralized things are. We have all these different jurisdictions that have their own incentives, their own elected bodies. We don't always coordinate as efficiently or effectively as we should, but technology can give you a unified view and help you sort of understand, okay, who cares who owns the land? What we care about is fire risk and who's managing the vegetation? Is it happening? Do we need some kind of alert that tells us, actually, we've got growing risk in this area and we need to go address it? Then we can figure out whose land it is and how to action it. But that's something we're starting to dig into.

• 12:32Rebecca Bellan?

  For that use case, what kind of tech are you using for that? Because I recently interviewed a company that they do satellites, super-low orbit satellites. And so that's something that they provide, actually, so.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  We're not actually in contract with anybody yet. That's our hypothesis, is that satellite imagery is going to be an important part of that. We're just starting the conversation through our budget process this year and talking to our local university about how to put together some kind of pilot or partnership focused on that. I think ultimately, whether it's fires, floods, earthquakes, whatever it is, there will be some commonalities to understanding where risk is geographically, where those riskiest areas are, being able to. Update that more frequently than you would without technology. And then something like an evacuation route may actually be shared across different models for different disaster scenarios.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  And I think this is where digital twin really comes in to your point of having a 3D model that's not just a replica, but can be updated, right, in in real time, adjusted to make sure that you're addressing whatever issues. Given just the increasing climate crisis, I really do think cities need to start thinking about, let's get a digital twin. And I think to your point of technology that has been around for a while, but still needs more adoption. Getting that right will really help cities not only address the needs of today and prepare them for, you know, any natural disasters or climate issues that might occur. But it'll also allow them to actually start to think and plan for the future, to make the cities more livable and more attractive for people who want to work there.

• 14:01Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, this tech can be, I mean, satellite imagery technology, amazing, also probably expensive, right? I don't know how cheap Autodesk runs for, but what would you say to cities that aren't as affluent as San Jose? And when they wanting to to do this as well, how do they make it happen?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I will just note, while many of our residents are affluent, San Jose was really built as a bedroom community. So from a tax base perspective, we're pretty challenged. We have pretty low revenue per capita, believe it or not, because most of our residents actually leave our city to go work in neighboring cities every day. So they really have the tax base. It's Apple in Cupertino or Google in Mountain View. We face the same kind of resource constraints. Our approach has been partnerships, whether it's working with our San Jose State Public University or big employers. Nvidia, you've probably heard of, started literally on the back of a napkin in a Denny's in San Jose. We signed an MOU with them last year

• 14:58Speaker 02

  that creates a framework for us to partner around things like workforce development or adoption of their technologies to pilot civic use cases. And certainly, we understand over time, as those tools mature and demonstrate that they can deliver value, there will be a paid component.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  But I hope that at that point, I think we will be very happy to pay for those emerging tools as they demonstrate that value. But the whole premise behind the Gov AI Coalition is that we want to identify the emerging startups and technologies, apply them to civic use cases, pilot them for what should be relatively low cost for us because we're providing the use case, the city workforce, we're applying it, that partner is getting all of that data and sort of opportunity to experiment. We're also getting a potential solution that over time we may be able to pay for. In fact, to further encourage this, we are rolling out, it'll be kind of official tomorrow, you get just a preview here, but we're rolling out a new AI startup incentive program. Last year, we released some office

• 16:01Speaker 02

  leasing incentives to make it really low barrier to move a startup or any company into our downtown. No business tax for two years, free parking for two years. And now we're adding essentially grants for AI startups that want to work on social and civic problems and be located in San Jose. Again, right where we have City Hall, our great public university that graduates more technical degrees every year than any other university in California. We want to invite AI entrepreneurs to move into our downtown next to our university and get a desk at City Hall and help us solve civic problems. We might become your first customer. And then there are literally 800,000 other public bodies, agencies, governments out there

• 16:44Speaker 02

  that can be your future customers after you prove it in San Jose.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  I love that. Congratulations. Let's give it up. I mean, that's pretty exciting.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  I absolutely love that. And what is exciting and interesting about this too, is talking about how we're using AI to continue to create economic opportunity. And at Autodesk, you know, that's important to us, right? We provide our software for free to students and educators all around the world. We have over 100 million students and educators in over 160,000 schools, including many in San Jose and San Jose State University. So when these startups come, not only are they going to get a very supportive community and government, but they will also To a skilled workforce because that's really important, right? If you are starting an AI company, you want people who know how to access and utilize AI technology working for you. And so it's exciting to see that in San Jose and in some small way.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we really appreciate that Autodesk makes its tools accessible to students. It's so important that we give people, particularly our young people, access to these tools. And one of my concerns with AI is that there can be barriers to entry, upfront costs around having access to the computing power, the data. How do we lower barriers for our young people, whether it's at our K through 12 schools or our public university or our tech museum, to be able to actually play around with and start to familiarize themselves with what a large language model is or how machine learning works and start to get access to that.

• 18:18Anthony Ha?

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• 19:03Anthony Ha?

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• 19:12Rebecca Bellan?

  When it comes to startups and civic tech, something a lot of startups don't necessarily recognize is that while government resources are constrained, they're actually a really good partner because a lot of those partnerships last for years, right? If they're not, you know, just a simple pilot.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Recurring revenue.

• 19:25Rebecca Bellan?

  Recurring revenue, that's what we all want.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  We love it.

• 19:28Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, we love it. But just to quickly switch gears, I mean, you've kind of danced around how Autodesk and San Jose have worked together, but you are working together today on something called an eight. Block project. Dar, can you walk me through what exactly happening there?

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm really excited. And Mayor Mahan and his administration are really very forward thinking and technology first. I tell you in private, I will tell you publicly now. And it's amazing when you have government officials who really understand how do we use technology for good? How do we use technology to solve problems? So we are working on an eight block initiative that's bringing together data centers, retail spaces and homes, right, and businesses. And if you can imagine, right now Autodesk software is actually being used by the architects to kind of design these retail spaces and the homes. And you can imagine a vision where you have the energy that is coming out of these data centers being used to power the retail spaces, the homes and the businesses,

• 20:23Speaker 03

  creating this virtuous ecosystem that's energy efficient. So it's really exciting, I think, the work that we're doing together and the possibilities are there because of that public-private partnership.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  And to your point, being able to use software to model things out and in a lower cost, less risky environment, actually play around with the variables and start to really understand, okay, if we make it possible from a policy perspective and others invest and build, how is this likely to play out? Because we want to try more innovative things, but we're a little bit risk averse in government. The idea, even as recently as a year or two ago, that we would have allowed data centers anywhere near our downtown was just crazy. And everybody said, no, data centers belong out in the middle of nowhere in some big field, as far away from a vibrant downtown as possible. But actually, and you've got to see it to believe it, right? And that's what the software is partly about.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Theoretically, vertical data centers in or near a downtown, if thoughtfully designed into a multi-use environment where they're connected via district energy system and as Dar is saying, you can use every electron twice. So all that excess heat, rather than being a liability because it's actually driving climate change, can be used to help you achieve carbon neutrality by heating neighboring buildings. That's a pretty big idea. But to get there requires a leap of faith for those of us in government to actually see it modeled out, to understand the data and to think about, okay, is this district energy system idea with vertical data centers something that we're even able to get the political will to implement is a real question.

• 22:03Rebecca Bellan?

  Well, it does sound like an incredible idea and I'd love to learn like why that occurred to the city and if you've seen other examples of this, but I mean, you say government, it's kind of difficult to get ideas past them, but the public as well, like, do people want to live near data centers? How do you pitch that to the public?

• 22:18Speaker 02

  I think if you ask it that way, the answer is probably no, although you'll learn in politics that with polling, it's all about how you ask the question.

• 22:24Rebecca Bellan?

  All right, how would you ask it?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  You know, I was on stage at a different conference last year with the CEO of PG&E and CEO of West Bank, and we were talking about this concept. So PG&E is our big energy provider, publicly regulated utility, it's an investor in utility in Northern California. And figuring out, okay, we know there's a lot of demand for computing power. There's a huge amount of need and capital, frankly, that is ready to go to build out data centers and expand computing. We know that it needs space and it generates a lot of excess heat, huge energy demand. And then we're working with West Bank, which owns a number of properties in our downtown, on the future of our downtown. How do we densify, bring more residential

• 23:06Speaker 02

  into downtown and kind of balance jobs and housing? And really it was through those conversations that we came to this thought process that actually maybe you could go with vertical data centers and build out a proper district energy system for the whole downtown and have it ultimately be a place where people live, work, play, and it's carbon neutral.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  And I think that's exactly right. It's having people understand, do you want to live in a space where you've reduced the carbon footprint, right? Do you want to live in a space where your energy is cheaper, right? Because it's more efficient and it's been supported by the businesses that are in your local community. I think you're going to find a lot of yes to that.

• 23:42Rebecca Bellan?

  Well, you put it at risk as well. I mean, there's a lot of benefits to it and it sounds really cool. I mean, the only thing that I can compare it to, I think we talked about this previously, is that in New York City, there's a place called Bath House. They do Bitcoin mining and they use that to heat the pools, which is cool. But this is-

• 23:56Speaker 02

  I'd also just- Say, design makes a huge difference. We're not going to have data centers that are simply large concrete blocks. We're going to require some, some form of ground floor activation, some amount of public art, some public space. And we'll be very intentional about how we allow this to happen.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  And this is where technology plays a role, right? Because you can kind of simulate, you can say, what are some of the negative externalities we want to avoid for? Noise, pollution, how can we make sure there's more green space? How can we make sure that this is aesthetically pleasing? You can model all of these scenarios in the technology tools. So that when you build it in real life, it really gives those desired outcomes. You know, we have real examples where we've done that.

• 24:39Rebecca Bellan?

  But when you're talking about like a data center that people live around, if anything happens with the power with that, it could affect the power of people's, you know, lives, their fridges might go, you know? It could affect a lot of things. And yes, you can test for a lot of things in simulation, but there are always edge cases that you can't test. And this is why it's so difficult to roll out things like autonomous vehicles or autonomy in general. Because there's always edge cases and it's really hard to get those. Like digital twin is not a panacea for, we've tested it all.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I think you're right. And that's why we actually need more real world applications. Because as we start to deploy these things in the real world, we start to understand, right? What did our model not tell us that we can kind of take to get this better and get it right?

• 25:18Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, I wonder what that would look like as a test, like a small one. So when it comes to how else you're using these design tools, you know, we talk about what are cities facing right now? Um, in terms of crises, we talked about climate resilience a bit. So just any way that we're kind of using AI to help us make decisions, does that not open the door to bias or other risks?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  I mean, anytime you have humans involved, whether directly or building the tool that you're using, bias is always a concern and it's something we need to be mindful of. One of the things we've done with the Gov AI Coalition is build a AI fact sheet. It's kind of like the nutrition facts on the back of your box of cereal or any other packaged product. You take a look at it, it gives you the breakdown of what's in it, how bad for you it is or good, I guess. We have a, a Set of structured questions that we ask of all AI vendors to better understand how their models designed, which training sets they use, what kinds of questions they've asked and sort of whether or not they're being thoughtful about questions like bias and security, because we want to know what we're getting into.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  It's an evolving space. I don't want to pretend that we've figured this out, but we we try to be really thoughtful about that. For example, we're doing a lot of work with object detection on city roadways, putting cameras on city vehicles to identify potholes, graffiti, streetlights that are out. We're also, and this is a little riskier, we're trying to more efficiently identify lived in vehicles. We know we have a thousand plus people living on our streets in vehicles and we want to be able to do outreach and deliver services, but we do not record or keep any faces. We can identify that maybe someone's living in the vehicle without keeping any data that would help us identify the actual identity of that person. And so we've tried and we have very strict data retention policies

• 27:09Speaker 02

  where we're deleting data that we don't want to keep because it could be used in bad ways in the future. So we try to be very thoughtful about how we're using new tools in a way that's going to keep everybody safe while making us more effective.

• 27:21Rebecca Bellan?

  Is this the same tech we had talked about this offstage? That you're using it also to prevent theft of vehicles?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  So we also have an automatic license plate reader network. And this has turned out to be a very powerful tool. So we have put cameras, we already had traffic cameras to monitor traffic flows and many states and cities have red light cameras. We're using ones that are optimized, probably her flock cameras are able to read license plates. And we delete the data every 30 days if it's not being used in an active investigation. But last year, we recovered over $3 million worth of stolen vehicles in the city of San Jose, often very quickly. I mean, we were watching the vehicle that the automatic license plate readers at major intersections across the city is fed into, you know, a single database with kind of real time analysis that can tell us, oh yeah, there goes the stolen vehicle.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Like we can get the helicopter up in the sky and go follow it and get it back. And that creates a deterrent effect. When you start with high confidence, you know, most of the time you're able to go recover the vehicle and apprehend the suspects. People start to decide, maybe I shouldn't steal cars in San Jose anymore. And that's been quite effective for us.

• 28:25Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, it's good that you have these kind of data retention policies because it can be a slippery slope from we're solving a problem to big brothers watching.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I think about it all the time. I mean, it's always this balance of, I mean, we do not want to construct a surveillance state and undermine people's civil liberties. At the same time, the reality is that when it comes to public safety, folks who, for whatever reason, are committed to committing crimes, sometimes very sophisticated operations, are going to use technology and get more sophisticated over time. And so we have to figure out how do we use tools that allow us to be effective and keep the community safe and create accountability and recover stolen property and so on and so forth without putting at risk the fundamental civil liberties that make our country a great place to live.

• 29:08Rebecca Bellan?

  Now, when we talk about responsible procurement and just partnerships in general, working with other companies, I mean, this isn't exactly partnerships, but Autodesk last year acquired something like seven companies per PitchBook data, mostly to beef out tech capabilities. Can you speak to any of them? Were any of those acquisitions specific to helping with urban planning, city planning, design?

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Absolutely. We acquire companies, you know, of course, like any company, our technology, some of it is built in-house, some of it we acquire companies and bring companies in, and sometimes we partner with other organizations. And some of the companies that we acquired have actually helped us with our industry cloud. So we have an architecture, engineering, and construction industry cloud called Forma. It's a very cool tool, and it essentially helps with that convergence of design and make. So if you think about the urban planning that you're doing, you want to bring in data, right? You want to bring in data about the environment. You want to bring in climate-related data. You want to make sure that you can, even from the early pitch stage process, you can say, will we meet our sustainable goals? Because one of the things about sustainability people

• 30:16Speaker 03

  sometimes get wrong is sustainability actually comes hand in hand with efficiency and effectiveness when included at the beginning of the conversation. It can actually help you save time, save money, save resources. And so Forma enables you to do a lot of that. And, you know, I was actually with a customer. Recently in Florida and the customer was telling me about how they had this part of their process with some of their sustainability business that they were actually losing money on. And after implementing format, they were able to increase it to a 30% margin business.

• 30:50Rebecca Bellan?

  Wow.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  So talk about the difference that makes. All of a sudden, they were able to hire some interns. They were able to create jobs, right? They went from something being essentially unprofitable to becoming very profitable to the tune of 30%. So I think these are ways that we are continuing to say, not only are we looking at our homegrown technology, but what is technology we can acquire to help us better serve our customers as they design and make the world around us. And that very much includes governments as we work to make our cities more livable, more workable, and ultimately, hopefully, more enjoyable too.

• 31:23Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, so it seems like it's part of Autodesk's overall kind of push towards focusing on AI and cloud. And recently, not to put you on the spot, but recently Autodesk did have some layoffs. Around 1,000 people were cut. Were those two related at all, cloud and AI investments versus the types of people who are no longer with the company?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  First of all, let me say, like our CEO said, you know, we deeply value all of our employees. They're very talented individuals, including those who are leaving. And we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we assist them as they begin their next chapter. You know, companies and businesses evolve, right? Roles of today are different than roles of the future. We are working to make our go-to-market more efficient. We recently rolled out last year a new transaction model, so there's some efficiency we have to do there. And for over a decade, we've been investing in AI. So AI isn't new for Autodesk. We had generated design with our manufacturing industry cloud fusion. And that investment continues, right? Because we need to continue to help our customers as they design and make the world around us.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  And so that investment we've been doing for over a decade continues.

• 32:27Rebecca Bellan?

  Going forward, would you say that sustainability for Autodesk is a core principle?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, it's interesting because I say before sustainability was cool, Autodesk was doing sustainability. When it became cool and everybody joined the party, "Hey, we're here for it." We continued focusing on sustainability. Whether or not it continues to be cool, we're going to stick with it, you know, because sustainability for us, when we think about our purpose as a company, our purpose is to design and make a better world for all. Sustainability is at the heart of that. And like I said, sometimes there are misconceptions about what sustainability is. The fact is, all of us, sustainable infrastructure is a core part of how our cities are able to be livable, how our cities are able to deliver for their constituents. So sustainability continues to be a critical

• 33:15Speaker 03

  part of the work that we do. And, you know, one of the things that we actually recently did a survey of thousands of customers around the world, and this continues to actually be a top priority for the vast majority of businesses who are in architecture, engineering, construction, product design, and manufacturing, again, because it helps with efficiency and effectiveness. So we continue to see it matter to our customers, it matters to us, and it will continue to matter to us.

• 33:42Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you said that about we'll keep doing it even if it's not cool, because, you know, we've seen other companies pull back on other measures due to political pressure. So I think it's just, it's a constant kind of moving chessboard. Well, I think that's probably all the time we have. So yeah, give it up for our panelists today. Thank you so much.

• 34:02Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Locum-Solo with editing by Kel. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.