Source: KRLD CEO Spotlight | Podcast host: David Johnson | Publication date: October 27, 2026
In an October 27 episode of KRLD CEO Spotlight, GDT Chair and CEO Shawn O’Grady joined host David Johnson to discuss how organizations can move from AI interest to practical business results and how to approach adoption, cost, and innovation.
The interview, titled “Billion-Dollar Deal: Turning AI Hype Into Business Results,” explores the decisions facing businesses as they evaluate AI applications and infrastructure investments. O’Grady explains how GDT helps organizations turn AI ideas into practical applications, starting with a clear understanding of the business use case.
“Artificial intelligence isn’t necessarily helping them create a new business; it’s helping them improve the business they already have,” O’Grady said in the interview.
The conversation follows the launch of GDT’s AI Lab and AI Factory Center of Excellence in Dallas, which provides customers a production-grade proving ground to develop and test use cases on real infrastructure before investing in or receiving production equipment.
O’Grady weighs in on how organizations can identify worthwhile use cases, assess requirements, and determine when to move forward. O’Grady also shares GDT’s experience introducing AI to its own workforce. His account offers a look at how ideas emerge inside an organization as well as the decisions that follow when an experiment shows promise.
“It doesn’t cost very much to experiment and try things. It gets expensive if we roll that out to all 900 employees plus our thousands of customers,” said O’Grady. “That’s where we start to say, ‘Let’s put together a business case. Let’s try to understand what problem we’re solving.’”
The conversation also covers:
- Balancing cost control, governance, and innovation, including how to build a business case and decide whether a promising experiment is ready to scale.
- Choosing between packaged software with AI capabilities and custom enterprise applications.
- The surge in investment in AI chips and data centers and parallels with earlier technology booms.
Hear O’Grady’s full perspective on Audacy, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
