How Ari Kaplan Went From Moneyball to Databricks - AI, Data & the Future of Business

Most executives are chasing AI ROI while their data is scattered across silos, platforms, and systems that don't talk to each other. Ari Kaplan, Head of Evangelism at Databricks and the analyst whose work inspired the movie Moneyball, explains why the data intelligence platform is the missing foundation and what it actually takes to turn AI into business outcomes. Ari leads evangelism at Databricks, the data and AI company powering over 75% of Fortune 500 enterprises with revenues growing 50–60% year over year. Previously, he built the analytics department at the Chicago Cubs, served as AI Evangelist at DataRobot, VP of Analytics at Nielsen, and sits on Intel's AI Board of Advisers. In this episode, hosted by Binny Mathews, Ari shares the storytelling framework he uses with Fortune 500 CEOs, how data platforms evolved from warehouses to lakehouses to intelligence platforms, and why a single AI question can silently cost your company $1,000 without anyone knowing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:17 Ari Kaplan's background 2:53 Storytelling vs. selling to C-suite 4:37 Key components of an AI narrative 7:30 Technical vs. executive personas 9:56 What CEOs actually want from AI 11:01 Moneyball origin story 13:38 How to think about AI ROI 14:49 Data warehouse → lake → lakehouse 19:50 Why 75% of enterprises have a lakehouse 21:47 LLMs, RAG & agents explained simply 25:27 Will Gen AI automate the automation? 28:03 Why humans still evaluate LLMs 30:22 Databricks pricing explained 31:51 Why people really buy Databricks 34:04 Governance, lineage & AI cost control 35:22 One AI question can cost $1,000 36:05 Texas Rangers: 7x data usage 38:43 How Ari started in baseball analytics 40:32 Moneyball & culture resistance 42:35 Ari's 5-year AI prediction 46:14 AI email, calendar & entertainment 47:00 Closing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/4iVvWEL 🌐 More episodes: https://hai.work/podcast 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Please subscribe and leave a review — it helps more enterprise leaders find the show. #GenerativeAI #DataStrategy #Databricks #AIForBusiness #MoneyballAI #DataIntelligence #MachineLearning #EnterpriseAI #LLM #RAG #DataLakehouse #AILeadership #BusinessAI #AriKaplan #HAIPodcast #HAIPodcast #HumanFirstAIPodcast ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from #InAudio: https://inaudio.org/ Upbeat Energetic Rock by Infraction / Dynamic Groove 📌 This episode was originally recorded as part of ProjectPro's AI Monetisation Podcast. The podcast has since evolved into HAI (Human-First AI), and this episode is now part of the HAI podcast archive. References to ProjectPro in the original recording have been retained.