Tantra’s Mantra Podcast – Episode 70

Episode 70:

State of Enterprise AI – Discussion with Lenovo & TCS

Date: July 06, 2026
This is a special episode produced by the collaboration between TiE San Diego and Tantra’s Mantra.
In this episode, I speak to Mark Budgen of Lenovo and Rajnikant Gupta of TCS on the current status of AI adoption in enterprises. We start by discussing which segments and which functions within organizations have seen deeper adoption of AI, whether AI projects have moved from PoC and trials to production, what the major challenges are in that transition, how the thinking and approach of enterprises toward AI have changed over the short period, the need for “Human in the loop,” and the necessity of Hybrid AI. We discuss key takeaways from Lenovo’s “CIO Playbook 2026” report and how enterprises are now more focused on improving and accelerating business outcomes rather than simply improving productivity.
Finally, we delve into what to expect in the near and far future, moving from Generative and Agentic AI to Physical and Embodied AI.

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Index

00:00 – Intro
01:05 – Guest intro (Mark Budgen, CTO, Global Technology Partners at Lenovo, & Rajnikant Gupta, Global Head – Partner Ecosystems and Alliances, TCS)
02:28 – Current status of AI adoption in Enterprises, how AI can improve business, not just efficiency, risk considerations
06:30 – Difference in level of AI adoption between various functional groups within Enterprises – IT, Coding, Security, Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing
13:30 – Evolution of Human involvement in AI processes. Humans in the Agentic AI loop will be required for a long time, because of the risk of failure and its costs
16:56 – Key takeaways from Lenovo’s “CIO Playbook 2026” report: AI is not the entire toolbox, but one of the tools; focus is on how to use AI to improve and accelerate business and finally the outcomes; mapping IT KPIs to Business KPIs
22:16 – Current status of AI projects, in “Production” vs. “PoC” or “Trials” stage. The majority still in the process of moving to Production. Execs now better understand their business value; Focus on platforms to scale rather than simple point solutions
28:13 – Challenges in implementing AI: Employee fear of replacement, lack of domain experts with AI knowledge,
31:56 – Hybrid AI: How to decide where to run AI: Cloud or Edge? Dependencies: Sovereignty, access to data, power, and cooling; Token use optimization
38:27 – What to expect to see in the near and far future: Physical AI, Embodied AI, AI becoming ubiquitous and
41:20 – Closing
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