How ChatGPT Convinced Moderna to Merge its IT and HR Departments
One of the most underappreciated applications of artificial intelligence in the corporate world involves its role in writing performance reviews.
Take Moderna, the pharmaceutical giant. Late last year, Brice Challamel, its vice president of AI products and platforms, noticed a trend: ChatGPT usage by the pharmaceutical firm’s employees spiked every quarter, around the time managers conduct performance reviews.
Staff appeared to use ChatGPT to write both their self-evaluations and those of their direct reports, according to a dashboard Moderna designed to oversee the licenses it purchased from OpenAI for 5,000 of its employees. The dashboard, which top executives can view, shows how often employees use the chatbot as well as the general subjects they’re discussing with the app, he said. (It doesn’t show individual messages or prompts that employees typed, he said.)
The usage spike for performance reviews prompted Moderna executives to create a custom version of ChatGPT—which OpenAI calls “GPTs”—for writing the reviews, Challamel said. Its popularity took off in December, as staff submitted year-end reviews, he said.
The performance review GPT can pull information from Moderna’s Workday account, including past reviews and objectives, making it easier to compare trends over time, he said. And while the AI might suggest a first draft, he said he believes most employees end up making their own edits afterward.
“I have a hard time imagining that people would not read it before they ship it to their manager,” Challamel said.
Moderna pays for ChatGPT access for 5,000 of its employees, suggesting the company is spending at least $1 million a year on the software. In total, employees are now sending around 1.2 million messages a month to ChatGPT, Challamel said. That averages out to 240 messages per month (or eight per day) per employee, if all 5,000 of the employees use their accounts!
Automating review writing is just one example of the kind of productivity boost that conversational AI can give Moderna’s workforce, Challamel said.
The technology’s application in core HR functions is also one of the reasons behind the company’s decision last year to merge its HR and IT departments, he said. Now, Moderna’s top HR executive, Tracey Franklin, oversees the company’s AI initiatives. In most other companies, such oversight is handled by the chief technology officer or chief information officer.
“We are very serious about transforming the very fabric of our company to meet the moment of AI,” Challamel said.
AWS Slashes AI Chip Price, Undercutting Nvidia
Not all businesses and developers rent AI chip servers in the cloud. But when they do, they prefer Nvidia’s.
Amazon is trying to change that, and there's a reason to take its effort seriously. A few months ago, Amazon Web Services chief Matt Garman said the cloud provider’s new AI chip, Trainium 2, could get the same performance as Nvidia’s H100 chip at just 60% to 70% of the cost.
If that wasn’t enough, my colleagues reported this morning that the company is now driving an even better bargain: renting out Traininum 2 at just 25% of the cost of H100s for what it says is the same performance.
While Nvidia defenders are right to bring up its Cuda programming language as a moat, my colleagues explain that AWS has made big moves to make it easy for developers to use Trainium. We’d love to hear from those of you who try it—or have been tempted by other Nvidia alternatives.—Amir Efrati
Wiz Bang: The CISO Ring Behind Its Rise
In AI adjacent news, Google is buying cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion after Wiz reached $700 million in annual recurring revenue. Not bad for a company that’s less than five years old.
What gave Wiz an early advantage? A network of chief information security officers formed by its earliest investor, Cyberstarts.
Those CISOs buy products from startups in the investor’s portfolio and they take a stake in the companies. We covered this strategy three years ago.
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