Thomas Siebel

He characterizes the 21st century as a period of corporate mass extinction.

Siebel claims that in order to survive and thrive in the 21st century, organizations must undergo digital transformation by harnessing the four information technologies discussed in the book.

The book provides advice to organizations in the form of a 10-point CEO action plan.

Siebel is a proponent of building a “self-learning corporate culture” that motivates employees to continue their education on the job.

C3.ai offers cash awards of $1,000 to $1,500 to employees for each course they complete from a curated Coursera curriculum.

Thomas M. Siebel (born November 20, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman, technologist, and author.

He was the founder of enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software platform and applications company.

He is the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company with interests in investment management, commercial real estate, agribusiness, and philanthropy.

Siebel was born in Chicago, one of seven children of Arthur Francis Siebel, a Harvard-educated lawyer, and Ruth A. (née Schmid) Siebel.

His family was Lutheran.

Siebel is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a B.A. in history, an M.B.A., an M.S. in computer science, and an honorary doctorate of engineering.

Between 1984 and 1990, Siebel was an executive at Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of management positions.

Siebel served as chief executive officer of Gain Technology, a multimedia software company that merged with Sybase in December 1992.

In 1993, Siebel left Oracle and found Siebel Systems to pursue that opportunity.

In 1999, Siebel Systems became the fastest-growing technology company in the United States.

He states that since 2000, 52 percent of Fortune 500 companies have fallen off the list, and he discusses how new companies like Amazon, Uber, Tesla, Airbnb, and others have emerged and grown during this time.

Siebel was the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Siebel Systems, which was acquired by Oracle in January, 2006.

Siebel is the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company.

Siebel Systems was a software company primarily engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications.

As an executive at Oracle, Siebel proposed the idea of creating enterprise software applications tailored for marketing, sales, and customer service functions.

Oracle management declined his proposal.

Siebel Systems grew to over 8,000 employees in 32 countries, more than 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue greater than $2 billion before merging with Oracle in January 2006.

He was a member of the Trustees of Princeton University from 2008 to 2011.

He is the Founder and Chairman of the Montana Meth Project and the Siebel Scholars Foundation, and Chairman of the Siebel Foundation.

C3 AI is a software company Siebel founded in 2009 that specializes in large-scale enterprise artificial intelligence.

C3 AI offers an enterprise AI software product that uses machine learning and neural networks to solve complex analytical problems in commerce, industry, and government.

Organizations use this software to improve their operations, reduce costs, and improve readiness.

The US Air Force, Missile Defense Agency, and Department of Defense Innovation Unit are among its customers.

As of 2022, the company had 42 "turnkey enterprise AI applications" for customers in various industries and includes a "no-code" AI product that helps solve business problems.

He was ranked #5 and #3 of the world's top 25 philanthropists by Barron's Magazine in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

In 2013, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected Tom Siebel as a member.

Siebel serves on the Board of Advisors of the Stanford University College of Engineering, the University of Illinois College of Engineering, and the University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering.

He is a Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and is the Chairman of the Board for the American Agora Foundation.

C3.ai was included in the 2019 “CNBC Disruptor 50” list, with a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Through C3.ai, Siebel created a collaboration to use AI to help address COVID-19.

The company's board, led by Siebel and Patricia House, includes notable members such as former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten, Retired.

Siebel's fourth book, Digital Transformation, became a Wall Street Journal bestseller in July 2019.

In the book, Siebel discusses how the confluence of four modern information technology vectors—elastic cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things—is impacting business, government, and society.

In 2019, Siebel initiated a program at C3.ai that pays 100 percent of the costs for employees to complete an online master's degree of computer science (MCS) program from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Employees who complete the MCS degree receive a salary increase of 15 percent, a cash bonus of $25‚000, and additional stock options.