Thomson Reuters (TRI) CIBC Technology & Innovation Conference 13.0 summary

AI strategy and product integration

• Over 30 years of AI experience, with rapid adoption of generative AI as model capabilities improved from GPT-3 to GPT-4, enabling new product enhancements.

• Focused on two main customer needs: information retrieval and creation of written work products, both well-suited to generative AI.

• Developed an AI platform to prioritize enhancements in research and drafting products, including Westlaw, Practical Law, Checkpoint, and CoCounsel, with expansion into tax and accounting.

• Investments in cloud migration and addressing technical debt have been critical to enabling AI integration.

• AI investments exceed $200 million annually, with a strategy of build, partner, and buy to accelerate innovation.

Challenges and competitive positioning

• Internal challenges include organizing data, adapting to rapid AI model updates, and ensuring product quality.

• External challenges center on customer change management and market fatigue from numerous AI solution options.

• Competitive advantage is built on technology, proprietary data, and deep domain expertise, supported by strong customer relationships and trust.

• Customer success initiatives are emphasized to drive adoption and value realization.

Market demand and customer adoption

• Demand remains strong despite market uncertainty, supported by a resilient, recurring revenue model and non-discretionary products.

• Regulatory and tariff changes are driving increased demand for compliance and tax solutions.

• Legal industry leads in AI adoption, with tax and accounting about 12 months behind but accelerating due to new agentic AI capabilities.

• Automation is critical in tax and accounting due to declining numbers of new professionals and rising workload complexity.