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I've sat on every side of the partnership table.
Founder. CEO. Revenue leader…
Founder. CEO. Revenue leader…
Articles by Zubin
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Zubin Irani shared thisArvind Jain covered what Glean brings. Here's the part I care about most as a partnerships person. Bain & Company's report says that for every dollar companies spend on technology, they spend four on people and process. Software is the smaller half. The bigger half is changing how work moves between teams and systems, and that's exactly where Bain and Glean work together. Congrats to everyone at Bain on the report, and thank you for being such a great partner. A big shoutout to our partnerships team too. Getting Glean into a flagship report like this takes months of quiet, steady work with the Bain team, and they made it happen.Zubin Irani shared thisGlean is featured in Bain & Company’s new Technology Report 2026 as a model for the future of enterprise AI. The report highlights a shift from owning a system of record to understanding and acting on workflows that span systems and departments. The context needed to make a decision and drive results often lives across different applications. Glean was built to be that unifying layer. Our Enterprise Graph connects context across systems while respecting permissions, while Glean Assistant and Glean Agents put that context to work across functions. Meanwhile, Glean Intelligence routes each task to the optimal model to balance quality and cost, and Glean Protect governs access. But technology alone isn’t enough. Companies also have to redesign how work moves between systems. We’re pleased to partner with Bain on this. Bain helps enterprise clients identify and redesign high-value workflows, while Glean provides the context and agents to execute them effectively across systems. Congratulations to the Bain team on this important report, and thank you for your continued partnership: Christophe De Vusser, David Crawford, Philippe d'Arabian, Will Ficken, Ali Badr and Zubin Irani, Jitendra Kavathekar, Nick Mann, Matt, Tiffany Dong, Ashley Carson, Jay Philip
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Zubin Irani shared thisToday, Glean is a launch partner in OpenAI ’s new B2B marketplace, giving customers another way to bring Glean into their AI stack. We hear it from customers and see it in the field: no single AI tool can do it all. Customers want the best tools for the job, and the freedom to choose without getting locked in. Many enterprises have already made a big commitment to OpenAI. When they want Glean, they usually have to find new budget, add a new vendor, and start procurement from scratch. Now they can put part of their existing OpenAI commitment toward Glean. Same budget, fewer hurdles. We worked closely with the OpenAI team to get this ready, with a focus throughout on making the experience easier for customers. Three things it reinforced for me: 1. Great partnerships remove the friction customers feel, not just the friction between two companies. 2. A marketplace is only as strong as the field behind it. Our sellers are ready to walk customers through this from day one. 3. More choice needs guardrails. As companies add more models and agents, Glean AI Gateway gives IT one place to govern them. Thank you to our partners at OpenAI and to the Glean team who moved fast to make this real. It's a first step, and there's more we'll build together. Already an OpenAI customer and curious about Glean? Find us in the marketplace or message me directly. Blog link in the comments.
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Zubin Irani reposted this#Jev stole the show, from my past post. It's smoking hot right now. So I wrote a short blog explaining what it is and why people are so excited, in plain English that anyone can follow (I hope). Here's the 66 second version. Jev from TypeSafe AI isn't a better chatbot. It never writes a single sentence. It makes quick decisions, and it tells you how sure it is. Think about a credit-card purchase. In the blink of an eye, Jev checks whether it looks like fraud. If it's very sure, the purchase is approved or blocked on the spot. If it's not sure, a bigger AI takes a closer look, and the trickiest cases go to a human fraud specialist. That's the model: --> Big AI models like GPT and Claude write, explain, and handle the hard cases. --> Jev makes the fast, repeated calls around them. --> Ordinary software carries out the next step. So why the excitement? Speed and price. TypeSafe says Jev answers in 70 to 500 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) and doesn't charge for its answers at all, only for what it reads. That makes AI judgment cheap enough to put everywhere, not just in a chat window. It's not for everything. It won't write your emails or your code, and it still needs good information, careful testing, and people keeping an eye on it. Here's what I think is the real insight. A lot of what we ask AI to do today is really a quick decision dressed up as a conversation. And Jev doesn't just answer fast. It tells you when it isn't sure, so you know which answers to trust and which to hand to a person. That's what turns AI from a helpful assistant into something you can actually automate with. For the enthusiasts, please comment with some of your favorite use cases you're trying out or thinking about. The full blog, with more examples here:Jev is not a better chatbot. It is a new kind of AI decision-maker.Jev is not a better chatbot. It is a new kind of AI decision-maker.
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Zubin Irani shared this#Jev stole the show, from my past post. It's smoking hot right now. So I wrote a short blog explaining what it is and why people are so excited, in plain English that anyone can follow (I hope). Here's the 66 second version. Jev from TypeSafe AI isn't a better chatbot. It never writes a single sentence. It makes quick decisions, and it tells you how sure it is. Think about a credit-card purchase. In the blink of an eye, Jev checks whether it looks like fraud. If it's very sure, the purchase is approved or blocked on the spot. If it's not sure, a bigger AI takes a closer look, and the trickiest cases go to a human fraud specialist. That's the model: --> Big AI models like GPT and Claude write, explain, and handle the hard cases. --> Jev makes the fast, repeated calls around them. --> Ordinary software carries out the next step. So why the excitement? Speed and price. TypeSafe says Jev answers in 70 to 500 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) and doesn't charge for its answers at all, only for what it reads. That makes AI judgment cheap enough to put everywhere, not just in a chat window. It's not for everything. It won't write your emails or your code, and it still needs good information, careful testing, and people keeping an eye on it. Here's what I think is the real insight. A lot of what we ask AI to do today is really a quick decision dressed up as a conversation. And Jev doesn't just answer fast. It tells you when it isn't sure, so you know which answers to trust and which to hand to a person. That's what turns AI from a helpful assistant into something you can actually automate with. For the enthusiasts, please comment with some of your favorite use cases you're trying out or thinking about. The full blog, with more examples here:Jev is not a better chatbot. It is a new kind of AI decision-maker.Jev is not a better chatbot. It is a new kind of AI decision-maker.
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Zubin Irani reposted thisThis past weekend, a lot of very smart people in Silicon Valley spent Saturday night refreshing a waitlist. TypeSafe AI dropped #Jev, a ridiculously cheap decision model, and suddenly everyone I know was in a basement or home office somewhere trying to get access. (Yes, I was one of them. Well played, TypeSafe.) Then this morning Anthropic and OpenAI both shipped. Same day. Within hours, all three were live in Glean: GPT-6 Luna GPT-6 Sol Claude Opus 5.5 The benchmarks are great, but the price had our CFO Michael Miao jumping up and down on his couch. --> GPT-6 Luna: 50% lower input and ~58% lower output prices vs. GPT-5.6 Luna. Built for the focused, high-volume, repeatable work. --> GPT-6 Sol: 50% lower input and output prices vs. GPT-5.6 Sol. The heavy lifter for complex coding and agentic workflows. --> Claude Opus 5.5: 20% lower input and output prices vs. Opus 5, plus 60% cheaper cache reads. In our internal evals, that added up to better answers at 38%+ lower estimated cost per query. Judges preferred it in 61% of head-to-heads. Better and cheaper, in the same release. That keeps happening, and the only way to actually capture it is to not be locked into one model. Glean customers get the upgrade the day it ships, with no migration project and no new contract. How to get it: --> On Glean's key: they show up in the model picker automatically. All three are live now. Admins can opt out in Admin Console → Platform → Models. --> Bring your own key: turn them on in the same spot. Huge thanks to our team for shipping this in hours, and to our partners at OpenAI and Anthropic for making it possible. And speaking of Jev: I may or may not have spoken with the TypeSafe team today...exciting stuff!
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Zubin Irani posted thisThis past weekend, a lot of very smart people in Silicon Valley spent Saturday night refreshing a waitlist. TypeSafe AI dropped #Jev, a ridiculously cheap decision model, and suddenly everyone I know was in a basement or home office somewhere trying to get access. (Yes, I was one of them. Well played, TypeSafe.) Then this morning Anthropic and OpenAI both shipped. Same day. Within hours, all three were live in Glean: GPT-6 Luna GPT-6 Sol Claude Opus 5.5 The benchmarks are great, but the price had our CFO Michael Miao jumping up and down on his couch. --> GPT-6 Luna: 50% lower input and ~58% lower output prices vs. GPT-5.6 Luna. Built for the focused, high-volume, repeatable work. --> GPT-6 Sol: 50% lower input and output prices vs. GPT-5.6 Sol. The heavy lifter for complex coding and agentic workflows. --> Claude Opus 5.5: 20% lower input and output prices vs. Opus 5, plus 60% cheaper cache reads. In our internal evals, that added up to better answers at 38%+ lower estimated cost per query. Judges preferred it in 61% of head-to-heads. Better and cheaper, in the same release. That keeps happening, and the only way to actually capture it is to not be locked into one model. Glean customers get the upgrade the day it ships, with no migration project and no new contract. How to get it: --> On Glean's key: they show up in the model picker automatically. All three are live now. Admins can opt out in Admin Console → Platform → Models. --> Bring your own key: turn them on in the same spot. Huge thanks to our team for shipping this in hours, and to our partners at OpenAI and Anthropic for making it possible. And speaking of Jev: I may or may not have spoken with the TypeSafe team today...exciting stuff!
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Zubin Irani reposted thisA few months ago, Alexander Oakden and I were squeezed into a closet at AI Summit London, taking partner calls between sessions. Today, we stood together in a room with 50 partners at our EMEA Partner Day. That change says a lot about how quickly this community is growing. But the best part was not the number. It was the energy in the room, the openness of the conversations, and the shared excitement about what we can build together. I’m grateful to Brad Scott, Juliet Bramwell, Amar Maletira, Himanshu Nautiyal, and Des Frawley for joining us and sharing their stories and vision. Having leaders from across Glean voice their support for partners matters. It shows that our commitment to this ecosystem is not just a partnerships message. It runs across Glean, and we are serious about backing it. And a special thank you to Matt Cheung from Clarasys, Priyesh Shah from Rathbone Results, and Anna Textor from ICONIQ. Hearing Matt share how Glean has transformed Clarasys, Priyesh share the meaningful results from a transformation his team helped lead, and Anna bring the investor perspective on the AI landscape made this one of the highlights of the day. Alex, thank you for leading this community with such energy and purpose! To every partner who spent the day with us, thank you. We are still early, and I could not be more excited about where this community is going. And of course, special thanks to Amy Webster and many other Gleanies who helped make the event a success. #Partnerships #EMEA #EnterpriseAI
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Zubin Irani shared thisA few months ago, Alexander Oakden and I were squeezed into a closet at AI Summit London, taking partner calls between sessions. Today, we stood together in a room with 50 partners at our EMEA Partner Day. That change says a lot about how quickly this community is growing. But the best part was not the number. It was the energy in the room, the openness of the conversations, and the shared excitement about what we can build together. I’m grateful to Brad Scott, Juliet Bramwell, Amar Maletira, Himanshu Nautiyal, and Des Frawley for joining us and sharing their stories and vision. Having leaders from across Glean voice their support for partners matters. It shows that our commitment to this ecosystem is not just a partnerships message. It runs across Glean, and we are serious about backing it. And a special thank you to Matt Cheung from Clarasys, Priyesh Shah from Rathbone Results, and Anna Textor from ICONIQ. Hearing Matt share how Glean has transformed Clarasys, Priyesh share the meaningful results from a transformation his team helped lead, and Anna bring the investor perspective on the AI landscape made this one of the highlights of the day. Alex, thank you for leading this community with such energy and purpose! To every partner who spent the day with us, thank you. We are still early, and I could not be more excited about where this community is going. And of course, special thanks to Amy Webster and many other Gleanies who helped make the event a success. #Partnerships #EMEA #EnterpriseAI
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Zubin Irani shared thisProud to see Glean’s MCP server featured on Salesforce #AgentExchange today. Glean’s MCP server helps bring trusted enterprise context into Agentforce, connecting the information teams rely on with the workflows where they already work. This is an important step toward more open, connected AI experiences for employees and revenue teams. More on the announcement: https://lnkd.in/enVyaFhY
Zubin Irani replied to a comment
4d
Gabriel Bonilla Great question, and it's one we obsess over at Glean. About 70% of our Assistant usage runs on auto routing, where we pick the model for each task, so we have to know it's working. A few things we do:
--> Shadow testing. For a small slice of real work, the router handles the task for the user, and behind the scenes we run the same task on a cheaper model and a more expensive one. AI judges then score whether the router made the right call.
--> Head-to-head comparisons. It's easier to say "A beat B" than to grade an answer on its own, so we rate models by how often they win those matchups.
--> Results by difficulty. A good average can hide a problem. If easy questions get cheaper but hard ones get worse, the router is cutting the wrong corners.
--> Cost per result, not cost per call. A cheap answer that needs three follow-ups isn't cheap.
The payoff: in a recent test of 180+ real work tasks, routing cut token costs by 81%, and people preferred the results 78% of the time over a leading AI assistant. This is also where something like #Jev gets interesting. Its confidence score tells you which calls deserve a second look.
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Zubin Irani liked thisArvind Jain covered what Glean brings. Here's the part I care about most as a partnerships person. Bain & Company's report says that for every dollar companies spend on technology, they spend four on people and process. Software is the smaller half. The bigger half is changing how work moves between teams and systems, and that's exactly where Bain and Glean work together. Congrats to everyone at Bain on the report, and thank you for being such a great partner. A big shoutout to our partnerships team too. Getting Glean into a flagship report like this takes months of quiet, steady work with the Bain team, and they made it happen.Zubin Irani liked thisGlean is featured in Bain & Company’s new Technology Report 2026 as a model for the future of enterprise AI. The report highlights a shift from owning a system of record to understanding and acting on workflows that span systems and departments. The context needed to make a decision and drive results often lives across different applications. Glean was built to be that unifying layer. Our Enterprise Graph connects context across systems while respecting permissions, while Glean Assistant and Glean Agents put that context to work across functions. Meanwhile, Glean Intelligence routes each task to the optimal model to balance quality and cost, and Glean Protect governs access. But technology alone isn’t enough. Companies also have to redesign how work moves between systems. We’re pleased to partner with Bain on this. Bain helps enterprise clients identify and redesign high-value workflows, while Glean provides the context and agents to execute them effectively across systems. Congratulations to the Bain team on this important report, and thank you for your continued partnership: Christophe De Vusser, David Crawford, Philippe d'Arabian, Will Ficken, Ali Badr and Zubin Irani, Jitendra Kavathekar, Nick Mann, Matt, Tiffany Dong, Ashley Carson, Jay Philip
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Zubin Irani liked thisZubin Irani liked thisGlean is featured in Bain & Company’s new Technology Report 2026 as a model for the future of enterprise AI. The report highlights a shift from owning a system of record to understanding and acting on workflows that span systems and departments. The context needed to make a decision and drive results often lives across different applications. Glean was built to be that unifying layer. Our Enterprise Graph connects context across systems while respecting permissions, while Glean Assistant and Glean Agents put that context to work across functions. Meanwhile, Glean Intelligence routes each task to the optimal model to balance quality and cost, and Glean Protect governs access. But technology alone isn’t enough. Companies also have to redesign how work moves between systems. We’re pleased to partner with Bain on this. Bain helps enterprise clients identify and redesign high-value workflows, while Glean provides the context and agents to execute them effectively across systems. Congratulations to the Bain team on this important report, and thank you for your continued partnership: Christophe De Vusser, David Crawford, Philippe d'Arabian, Will Ficken, Ali Badr and Zubin Irani, Jitendra Kavathekar, Nick Mann, Matt, Tiffany Dong, Ashley Carson, Jay Philip
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Zubin Irani liked thisZubin Irani liked thisDelighted to welcome Zubin Irani, VP of Partnerships at Glean, to the Agentic Expo 2027 stage. If you want to know what it takes to get agents working in a real enterprise environment, with real data and real guardrails, Zubin is one of the people to hear from. Glean is doing the unglamorous, difficult work of making this stuff actually run. See you at Olympia London, 23-24 March 2027. agenticexpo.ai #AgenticExpo #EnterpriseAI #Glean
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Zubin Irani liked thisZubin Irani liked thisIs Jev overhyped? We tested it on 4 real enterprise tasks. https://lnkd.in/g45Ecv7C Thanks to Eddie Zhou Chau Tran Matt Zhao Aviral Singh Manav Agrawal for sharing their research here.
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Zubin Irani liked thisZubin Irani liked thisLast week, I somehow agreed to give three talks at the same time 😬 I’ve gotten much better at saying “no,” but I still STINK at it when it involves people and organizations I admire. So we made it work...one pre-recorded talk, one talk moved 90 minutes later, and a lot of calendar gymnastics. It was a joy to keynote Responsive Conference, sharing some of our latest Glean Work AI Index research. Thank you to the endlessly talented Trent Wakenight and Adam Rosendahl for capturing the talk visually. Simultaneously, I joined Zapier’s energizing ZapConnect, then bolted offstage to record talk #3 in a conference room at the Oakland Museum of California, while praying to the Wi-Fi gods (they were merciful-ish). All three talks were different, but they touched on something my colleagues and I have been thinking a lot about: the fine line between botsitting and botshitting. AI still requires a lot of human labor, especially when it lacks context. All the context feeding, supervising, and cleanup work is exhausting. So, over time, people start accepting “good enough”, or what researchers call "satisficing." Eventually, one person’s productivity gain becomes some poor colleague’s heaping pile of AI slop. The whirlwind day ended by signing copies of Your Best Meeting Ever alongside the inspiring Eric Ries. In his important new book, Incorruptible, Eric writes about how organizations can drift from their mission (even when the people inside them have good intentions). With AI, that drift often looks something like this: Make work better -> Use AI to make work better -> Use more AI. And, ta-da, somewhere in all that enthusiastic AI-ing, people stop asking the question: Did the work actually get better? Huge kudos to Robin P. Zander for assembling such an impressive group of people bent on reimagining how work works, including Ran Fan, Natalia Bielczyk, PhD, Jomal M., Michelle Riconscente, PhD, Jesse Freese, Josh Levine, Michelle Vitus, Lindsey Caplan, Aileen Cowles, Kimberly S. Arnold, Brandon Sammut, Dane Groeneveld, Jamie Lynn White, Joshua Sorkin, Tim Casasola, Shannon Stockdale, Brittany Ceres, and MANY others.
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Zubin Irani reacted on thisZubin Irani reacted on this9 months and 9 days. 283 days without work. Today, my family received foreclosure documents for our home. I'm a husband and father of four. For nine months, I've applied for Sales Development, Business Development, Inside Sales, Sales Operations, Revenue Operations, Sales Coordinator, Office Administrator, Warehouse Associate, and even Wastewater Technician positions. I've interviewed with recruiters, hiring managers, executives, and CEOs. I've completed assessments and unpaid sales assignments. I've pursued jobs that fit my experience and jobs that would simply help me feed my family. I wish I could tell you why I haven't been hired. I can't. I've been asked what's wrong with me. I've even been told to feed my children less. I wish I could shrug those words off. My family doesn't deserve this. I'm not asking for pity or a job I haven't earned. I'm asking for a chance. My background is in B2B sales, business development, and sales operations. I'm seeking remote work in those areas, but I'm open to other opportunities. If you know someone hiring, please introduce us. If you can share this post, thank you. I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm lost. But tomorrow I'll get up and try again. I'm asking for grace, hope, and one open door. #OpenToWork #JobSearch #SalesOperations #BusinessDevelopment #InsideSales #RevenueOperations
Experience & Education
Volunteer Experience
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Board of Directors
Global Systems Analyst Advisory Council
Economic Empowerment
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Board of Directors, Chair of Learning
Entrepreneurs' Organization
Economic Empowerment
Global network of 14,000+ like-minded leaders across 61 countries
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Founders Circle
StartingBloc
Economic Empowerment
Providing educational conferences and mentoring social entrepreneurs
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Member
YPO
- 13 years
YPO is the world’s largest and most prestigious global leadership community for chief executives and business presidents
Publications
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5 common pitfalls of CICD -- and how to avoid them
Info World
See publicationWhat's the secret to devops success? Start with continuous integration and continuous deployment.
Devops may be one of the haziest terms in software development, but most of us agree that five activities make devops what it is: continuous integration, continuous delivery, cloud infrastructure, test automation, and configuration management. If you do these five things, you do devops. Clearly, all five are important to get right, but all too easy to get wrong. In particular, continuous…What's the secret to devops success? Start with continuous integration and continuous deployment.
Devops may be one of the haziest terms in software development, but most of us agree that five activities make devops what it is: continuous integration, continuous delivery, cloud infrastructure, test automation, and configuration management. If you do these five things, you do devops. Clearly, all five are important to get right, but all too easy to get wrong. In particular, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) may be the most difficult devops moves to master. -
Why Agile Is Critical for Attracting Millennial Engineers
InfoQ
See publicationA new generation of engineers is not being trained in traditional software development methods, nor are they interested in working for businesses that use them. As the country's largest generation, Millennials are influencing Agile transformations in their workplaces.
We see at least 11 ways that Agile is a perfect fit for Millennial generation workers.
Businesses that adopt Agile sooner will gain a competitive advantage in recruiting as well as productivity. -
The Problem With Sort Of Doing Agile Mobile Development
App Developer Magazine
See publicationAgile development combines process, technology, and mindset in a deliberate way. If you neglect any one of those three pillars in mobile development, you’re setting yourself up to fail. “Sort of” Agile just won’t work.
The article discusses the difference in how to build mobile vs traditional applications. -
How agile helps attract and retain millennial tech pros
CIO.com
See publicationContributor to this article on how IT organizations are in search of talent, but they are finding that the agile methodology is great for attracting and retaining the next generation of engineers and developers.
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Agile Practice: The Competitive Advantage for a Digital Age
Harvard Business Review
See publicationContributor to this article about Agile's impact across businesses
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How to Retain Top Talent
cPrime
See publicationDuring a post-recession economy Companies see an higher than normal level of turnover. This article explains why and also how to prevent your employees from leaving you.
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How to Make Sure Your First Hire Is the Right Hire
BNET
See publicationAs an entrepreneur, your first hire is your most important hire. This is the story of my first hire and how to make sure your first hire is the right hire!
Projects
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AI Native Showcase
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Featured 8 Top AI Native companies at Glean:GO, including BaseTen and Fireworks AI.
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Keynote Speaker | Jenkins Worldwide Conference
See projectcPrime CEO, Zubin Irani, will discuss the very separate journeys of both Agile and DevOps practices in the mainstream of software development. Inspecting the intersection of DevOps and Agile as a dynamic duo in the effort towards expedited delivery, we will look to the future of how aligning the two together will provide wide spread increased visibility, productivity and efficiencies for teams and organizations.
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Events Chair Member | Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO)
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See projectEO is the only global network exclusively for entrepreneurs. EO helps leading entrepreneurs learn and grow through peer-to-peer learning, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and connections to experts.
My role was to organize events for the central California chapter for speakers and consolidated events.
Honors & Awards
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Certified Great Place to Work (Top 100)
Fortune
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Best Places to Work 2 Years in a Row, Place #11 and Place #4 | 2013-2014
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Fastest Growing Private Company by the Inc. 500 | 5000 6 Years in a Row! | 2009-2014
Inc. 500 & 5000
Inc. 500 | 5000 are the superheroes of the U.S. economy. America’s fastest-growing private companies wield powers like strategy, service, and innovation.
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Fastest Growing Private Company by the SF Business Times 6 Years in a Row | 2009-2014
San Francisco Business Times
Fast 100 is the Business Times' ranking of the 100 fastest-growing private companies in the Bay Area.
• http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/09/fast-100-fastest-growing-private.html
• http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/09/fast-100-fastest-growing-private.html#i3
• http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2012/10/fastest-growing-bay-area-
companies.html#i65
• http://samceda.org/wp-content/uploads/San-Mateo-County-Sweet-16.pdf -
Fastest Growing Private Company by the Silicon Valley Business Journal 6 Years in a Row | 2009-2014
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Executives of Silicon Valley's 50 fastest-growing private companies know a thing or two about growing revenue by leaps and bounds.
Organizations
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YPO
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- Present -
Entrepreneur's Organization (EO)
Board Member
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