Glean’s fight to own the AI layer inside every company

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it? Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI experiences, connecting to internal systems, managing permissions, and delivering intelligence wherever employees work. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Glean’s CEO and founder Arvind Jain at Web Summit Qatar to break down how enterprises are thinking about AI architecture, what's driving consolidation, and what's real versus hype in the agent space. Listen to the full episode to hear about: The fight between bundled AI from tech titans like Microsoft, Google and platform layers like Glean and its competitors. How AI adoption is reshaping leadership and organizational design. Why permissions and governance are harder problems than most companies realize. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the next-gen ERP powered by AI that actually
0:06.8	knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos.
0:13.2	It's a new workday. Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech French's flagship podcast about the
0:18.8	business of startups. I'm Rebecca Boulon,
0:25.0	and this is the episode where we bring on an industry expert to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep.
0:32.5	Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do work across an
0:38.1	organization. One of the companies at the forefront of that shift is Glein, which started as an
0:43.6	enterprise search product and is now positioning itself as a full-on AI work assistant. Glein has
0:49.5	raised funding at multi-billion dollar valuation as the market heats up around who will own
0:53.7	the AI layer.
0:54.9	And Glean CEO and founder Arvin is here with me at Web Summit Qatar to break it down. Arvin, welcome to the show or should I say, ahlemus'aqlan, given where we are. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. This is so fun. Is this your first time to Doha? That's right. First time. What do you think? It's fabulous.
1:11.3	I mean, this is a beautiful place.
1:12.7	Yeah.
1:13.7	And also great weather too. Is this your first time to Doha? That's right. First time. What do you think? It's fabulous.
1:11.3	I mean, this is a beautiful place.
1:26.8	Yeah. And also great weather, too. Yeah, oh my gosh. So where are you normally based? Normally, San Francisco. San Francisco. Okay. I'm in New York, and it is minus and it's freezing. And it's been so nice here in the sun. So we're really happy to be here.
1:33.9	Arvin, talk us a little bit through your background and what Glein's core pitch is now,
1:35.8	because it has shifted a little bit over the years.
1:36.4	Yeah.
1:40.8	So we started Gleen in early 2019, so we're now seven years old.
1:45.2	Before that, I was one of the founders of Rubrik, which is an enterprise data security company. We started that in early 2014. And then I had a long career before that
1:50.8	at Google as one of the early search engineers. For Glein itself, like, you know, as you, as you
	...

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