When Glean CEO Arvind Jain thinks about the future of work, he doesn’t picture a chatbot waiting for you to type a question. He imagines a digital companion that knows your goals, your meetings, even the documents you’re writing, and steps in to help before you ask.
That vision led him to found Glean in 2019 after more than a decade at Google and a successful run cofounding the data management startup Rubrik. Glean began as a search tool for company data. Over time it has grown alongside AI itself, moving from simple search to synthesizing information, reasoning through tasks, and into what Jain calls “agentic AI,” where systems take initiative. With a valuation of $7.2 billion (and our number one Most Innovative Company in Applied AI this year), Glean is positioning itself at the center of enterprise productivity—and offering a preview of how agentic AI may transform the way entire workforces operate.
Fast Company spoke with Jain about Glean’s origin story, the rise of agentic AI, and how enterprises are rethinking both human and machine roles in the workplace. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Before Glean, you founded another startup, Rubrik, where you noticed challenges with knowledge and documents. Can you share that story?
