Mark Cuban has a message for any CEO still treating artificial intelligence as something to dabble in: You’re going to be left behind.

“Over the next three years, there’s going to be two types of companies: those who are great at AI and those who went out of business,” the entrepreneur and investor said at Convergence AI Dallas, a Dallas Regional Chamber conference highlighting AI trends and innovation in North Texas.

The disruption is already underway, Cuban said. At Cost Plus Drugs, for example, he uses Claude to generate a weekly report comparing the company’s prices for its 25 most expensive drugs with those of its competitors. What previously would have required software or an employee now is available on any browser in minutes, he said. “I mean, that’s non-linear.”

Business journalist Alex Kantrowitz, host of the Big Technology Podcast, interviewed Cuban on stage for an hour-long session that capped the two-day event. The complete interview will appear as an upcoming episode, and the following are highlights from the conversation’s key themes.

Separating AI hype from reality

Kantrowitz: We’re in the middle of this moment where we’re hearing about the revolutionary power of artificial intelligence, where every day new capabilities are talked up and, despite the hype, our day-to-day hasn’t changed very much. For most people, ChatGPT is something they might try one day, or it’s a better Google, and an AI agent is something that sounds like it’s in the future but isn’t applicable today. How would you describe the gap between the hype and the reality on the ground today?

Cuban: I don’t think there is a gap. I really don’t. I think if you’re not using one of the large language models, whether it’s Claude, my favorite, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, from a business perspective, since this is a business and student audience, you’re falling way behind. That if you don’t know what an agent is and you happen to work at a company or run a company, you’re falling way behind.

It’s not that AI is smart. … It’s not like it’s going to take over everything, but like every other technology tool that preceded it, it’s having a major impact.

[Photo: Sandra Louz/DRC]

AI as a tool for building businesses

Kantrowitz: How do you build a business today, given the tools at your disposal? Is it different than the way you would build a business previously?

Cuban: It just depends where you are in your business life cycle or if you are starting a business.

If you already have a business, the things that you’ve considered outsourcing, your customer center, your customer call centers, whatever it may be, AI agents are perfect for. So you can do that. The stuff you would give to an intern, AI agents are perfect for it.

… We hear a lot of stories about huge public companies that …spend a lot of money to try to implement AI, and it doesn’t really get them a return on investment. And people say, “Why, if AI is so great?” Because you already are running your business the way you’ve always run it, and, in order to take advantage of AI, to answer your question, you have to reformulate your business completely to build it on AI. It’s the difference between running a business before PCs and computers and running a business after PCs and computers. You would do it completely differently.

… All of you could take out your phone right now, go to your favorite large language model, come up with an idea for a business and, instead of coming to me and saying, “Mark, is this a good idea?”, just go in and say, “Okay, here’s what I want to do. Here’s what I think. Write me a business plan and tell me the good and the bad and the ugly about this and how I should finance it, what the economics should be. “

How software companies can survive SaaS disruption

Kantrowitz: The market has been really punishing software stocks because it has become that easy to build software, and I think one of the things investors have realized is that all this software that is being built is built to scale but never perfectly suits people’s needs. There is a lot of room to disrupt them with AI. Potentially, you can have a lot more custom software, and they’re calling it the “SaaSpocalypse.” Do you think that that sell-off is justified?

Cuban: Yes and no. It depends on the company.

…What you have to have is some unique IP that is not shared. I’ll give you an example of a company called DocuSign. With all of the things that we sign, you would think that is easy, because there are other companies, Adobe and others, who do all that. But it’s a global company. All the laws associated with signing a legal document are different from city to city, state to state, country to country, and you have to know all those things. That’s a unique differentiation that you don’t want to be dependent on AI having right.

…This is a database of things that you can’t get anywhere else, that they’re not making available to AI to be trained on. It’s their classified information. I think those companies will be okay.

[Photo: Sandra Louz/DRC]

Watching the ROI on AI

Kantrowitz: OpenAI recently announced that they had raised $110 billion, which I think is 3x the largest IPO ever. They’re planning to spend more than $1 trillion in infrastructure in the coming years. I’d love to hear your perspective, not on the spend, but on the return needed to make those numbers work.

Cuban: They’ll never get it. …The data center, the ability to process, is going to get faster, cheaper, right? And it’s going to happen faster and quicker than people expect, and so I think a lot of the numbers that they’re throwing out there aren’t going to come to fruition.

…But those who have just gone all-in, some of them are spending more cash than they have available. I understand why. I’m just not convinced that for all of them it’s going to work.

The future of work

Kantrowitz: I’ve heard from more than a few people that they believe that using these tools inside their companies effectively means they’re training the AI to replace them. That has to be true in some cases. What do you think happens to the broader job picture here when this technology continues to ramp?

Cuban: There’s going to be displacement. There’s no question about it, but I’m not one of those people that says jobs will be optional or (there will be) 50% unemployment. No.

If all you’re doing is reformatting or you’re answering a question, yes or no, then there’s a good chance you’re going to be replaced by AI. But if you’re a critical thinker, there’s always going to be a need for you. If you’re a critical thinker and you understand how to use the tools so that you understand where it is best to use an agent, where it’s best not to use an agent, where it’s best to do vibe coding, where it’s best not to …if you learn how to use these tools and you know how to think critically, you’re curious so you’re always learning, you’re always going to have a job.

If I was graduating today, or if I was a 16-year-old looking for a job, I would learn everything there is to know about AI, and I would go to small and medium-sized businesses and say, “Let me walk in the door and all those things that you know you need to do that are the bottom of your to-do list, let me show you how to use an agent to do those things because in doing so, you’ll be more productive, more competitive, you’ll make more money.”

I’ll give you a perfect example. One of my Shark Tank companies is called Rebel Cheese. They sell vegan cheese, and they ship it all over the world. …For those of you who ship stuff in boxes, you know there are different-sized boxes for UPS, DHL, whatever, and you start in one zone, and there’s a different price to ship to a different zone. And you also probably know that they don’t ever charge you the right price. Does that sound familiar?

So, what Rebel Cheese did was they wrote a little agent that took a picture of the box when it’s getting ready to ship, determines the size, looked at the price list, took a picture of the invoice, compared them and, when they were different, created the credit request. They are saving $50,000 a month, and it’s all automated. They don’t have to touch it.

That’s where the agents come in handy, and you have to know how to implement that.

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