Lead With AI
"80% of AI Use Happens Off the Grid": How Lanai Software Reveals the Hidden World of Enterprise AI
Tue, 03 Jun 2025
In this episode of Lead with AI, Dr. Tamara Nall sits down with Lexi Reese, CEO and co-founder of Lanai Software, who exposes a startling reality: 80% of AI use in companies happens completely off the radar. Reese shares a jaw-dropping story from an insurance company where sales teams unknowingly uploaded customer zip codes into AI tools - creating potential legal issues as zip codes can serve as proxies for race in insurance decisions. Lanai's platform acts as a "sixth sense" for organizations, detecting AI interactions across the enterprise in real-time and transforming apparent chaos into strategic opportunity - helping one financial institution boost client satisfaction by 30% after identifying and scaling effective AI use cases. The conversation tackles the ethics of visibility versus surveillance, with Reese emphasizing their commitment to focus on patterns, not policing employees, guided by their advisor's principle to "don't be creepy." For leaders wondering what AI tools their teams are actually using, Reese suggests creating an anonymous five-question survey that typically reveals teams are using 3-5× more AI tools than management realizes.
Chapter 1: What is the hidden world of AI use in enterprises?
What if you could see and secure every AI interaction in your company down to the prompt? In this episode of Lead with AI, I sit down with Lexi Reese, Powerhouse CEO and co-founder of Lanai Software. Lanai is the first platform that gives CIOs and CISOs a real-time prompt level view of how AI is being used across the business.
From stopping data leaks to boosting revenue by up to 35%, Lanai is AI with accountability. If you care about AI governance, enterprise security, or next level productivity, this conversation will blow your mind. Let's talk about what it really means to lead with AI. Let's get into it. Welcome to Lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall.
In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in. Hi, everyone. How are you? My name is Dr. T. I am your host with the Lead with AI podcast.
And today I am so excited to be here having a conversation with Lexi Reese from Lanai. How are you, Lexi? I'm doing great, Dr. T. Thrilled to be here. Amazing. And we're happy to have you. And this discussion is especially important for all you B2B guest enlisters that we have out there. So let's get started. So Lexi, just tell us a little bit about you. Who are you at your core?
What was the great vision that you had when you started the company?
Yeah, so I'm Lexi Reese. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Lanai, and I've spent my career building what I call quiet infrastructure. It's essential systems that shape how people live and how they work, but that most never think about. At Google, I helped build their real-time ML ads engine before ML was cool. At Gusto, I scaled a payroll and health insurance company for millions of employees.
And what's always fascinated me is how the right infrastructure amplifies human potential. So so right now we're in the most profound shift at work of anything we've seen in our lifetime since maybe the dawn of the Internet. But we are missing infrastructure for it.
And I saw this paradox, this paradox where companies were racing to adopt AI, but had zero visibility into how it's actually being used. And so Lanai is an observability and security platform that helps people see the interactions between humans and AI when they're happening, why they're happening, and how risky those are.
Wow. That's amazing. That's, that's amazing. And your background, I mean, it's just so prime for, for this and seeing that gap in that need because you, you are right. I mean, I actually heard someone discussing one time that his employees were using, you know, all kinds of, you know, GPTs, et cetera, different LLMs for all kinds of things.
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Chapter 2: What are the risks of using AI without visibility?
What was the jaw dropping moment when you can tell us about a case when someone first experiences Lanai and realize that, wow, this changes everything for the company?
Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, 80% of AI use happens off the grid. IT cannot manage what IT can't see. And most risk is not actually from bad actors. It's from smart employees doing the wrong thing with the right intent. Got it. I feel like we're in this BAM era. And you've heard a lot about these blind AI mandates where CEOs will say, go use more AI. But companies don't need more AI tools.
They need intelligence about their AI. A holy smokes moment, Dr. T, was when I learned in an insurance company, a sales leader was saying how much AI was helping her with upsell rates. So they were using AI and their sales team was able to sell a lot more. Got it. Great.
She told this anecdote at an AI council meeting and most Fortune 500 companies have AI councils and they meet to talk about the anecdotes because they don't have a lot of data of how people are using AI and what's good and what's bad. So sales leader comes in and says, this is great. More upsell. Data compliance leadership says, wait, tell us about how they're doing that.
And what was happening, right idea, wrong execution, sales team was uploading customer data into an AI tool that had been quietly added to their existing customer relationship system. So it was not a net new tool. It was a net new function within an existing tool. Got it. And they were uploading customer information that had zip code. Zip code in the insurance industry is a proxy for race.
And using it to decide who or who not to sell to is illegal. Yes. So that was a holy smokes moment where... I felt like we could create and we have created a product that gives visibility and the name Lanai comes into lean into AI, but do it safely in a way that empowers both your employees and your customers.
Wow. No, that's amazing. I mean, y'all saved them from a lot of heartache, potentially liability. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. And then if we think about like opening up the hood and looking inside the brain, what would we actually find if we were to open up that hood?
So, In Cyglin I, you'd find a sixth sense about your organization's AI interactions, connections between teams and tools and outcomes that were previously invisible to you. So under the hood, we detect AI interactions across the enterprise. We classify them to identify the use case and we label the risks. And we use AI to do all of this.
Still, for the real sort of aha for some companies, you know there was a Chinese AI company competitive to open AI called DeepSeek. Most of the world found out about it two weeks after we were able to detect that customers' employees were using DeepSea. Wow. So we see things that take many weeks in... minutes and we make that intelligence actionable through real time dashboards.
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Chapter 3: How can organizations benefit from AI observability?
And so understanding the purpose and the impact of AI interactions without reading you, Dr. T's individual prompts.
That's amazing. Now, how does it work? Because there are different types of leaders. I can imagine that you do this analysis, you conduct the assessment, you're talking to the leaders within an organization and you have different types of people. You can have the person that can read it and like blow up.
Um, or you'd have the person that can have a more kind, thoughtful response, but you started the conversation by saying that like most of these employees are good, well-intentioned people just with maybe lack of information.
How do you have a discussion with a leader about whoop, this is going on and how do you change the use of these tools in a way that is compliant and it is safe without particularly somebody like blowing up at, a team or a person or et cetera. How does that work?
Yeah, I think, look, there's a good story of one healthcare executive literally stands up when he sees his clinicians using 18 different AI tools, which is 15 more than was approved. And that's alarming, but that alarm was transformed to curiosity when we showed how these tools were improving the patient care times and reducing documentation burdens.
His perspective shifted from shut this down to scale this. This is the power of visibility, transforming apparent chaos into strategic opportunity. And the jaw drop isn't discovering shadow AI, it's seeing patterns you didn't know before. So, you know, just like with your kids, you say, don't get furious, get curious. Right, right.
This is all the speed at which human beings and enterprises are experimenting with and utilizing AI is going so much faster than any one person or existing team can keep up with. Right. What we talk to our customers about is it's a new AI era, and AI era requires new infrastructure. That's what we're providing, a map. Where is there traffic? Where are there accidents?
Where are there clearer routes? And I think most people understand that. Yeah, no, that's good.
That's good. Now, you gave us some wonderful examples. Talk to us about the scene where you know you're getting the results for your customers, but you sat back after you saw some assessment, had a conversation, helped a company, and you got chills because you're like, Let me pat myself on the back a little bit.
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Chapter 4: What is the story behind Lanai Software's impact?
I love this. We actually have a bell that we have a bell in our office that says together. We so rock. Oh, we believe values become norms and norms become expectations. And as one example, we have an orange chair in every room that is a customer. And it's to remind us that we're only here by grace of our customers. And when we get a win, we,
For our customers, which is defined by they have some win. Yes. Then ring the bell. So that's what it is. And it's pretty fun. You know, these are small things that ripple. So a financial institution had mandated AI use but couldn't measure impact. And they use Linai and they see a small team impact. that's creating personalized client research briefings in minutes instead of days.
And when they scaled that approach company-wide, client satisfaction climbed by something like 30%, and they were able to unlock a serious multi-million dollar figure in new revenue because relationship managers spent more time with clients
And they were able to begin the conversation knowing more deeply what the issues and concerns were of clients, which is, I like that example because I think we say the buzzwords of, well, AI can augment human capabilities. But really, I think most people are worried AI is going to come for your job. I think AI will change all of our jobs fundamentally, and AI will take away jobs definitively.
I will put no lip service on that. But I think when you democratize access to AI tools and let your employees experiment with guardrails, They know what will help them do their job better and they do the job to help the people that they're serving. So, you know, in the same way you can probably do this podcast better, I can run this company better as a result of A.I.,
It's finding those stories that actually demonstrates visibility leads to the ability to manage to outcomes that really drive real value.
Right, right. No, I love that. The key there that you said, I mean, there are a lot of nuggets you drop, but I love guardrails. You know, it's giving your employees the independence and the freedom to explore, but within some confinement so that we won't have these oopsies, you know, sometimes.
Exactly. Yeah. The magic isn't the AI tool. It's finding the needle in a haystack use case. And scaling it rapidly with thousands of employees. And we know this. Everybody who's managed a big team know there's always champions that are just able to do the thing so well.
And you say, oh, I want to bottle Dr. T and make everybody be more like Dr. T. Effectively, Linnea is helping identify those champion use cases so that you can spread that magic to everyone. That's amazing. That's amazing.
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Chapter 5: How do you balance AI visibility with employee privacy?
Yeah, our ethical line is very clearly balancing visibility with privacy. We want organizations to understand their AI ecosystem without creating employee surveillance. And that's why we focus on patterns and not people. We show trends. We show opportunities through aggregation and anonymization. We're not monitoring individual performance or creating AI productivity scores or
for each human being. We also believe in transparency. So one of our advisors is the chief security officer of Reddit. And he just immediately when we started talking about this, had the mantra that don't be creepy. And I know that sounds weird, like it's so basic. Obviously, you're not going to be creepy.
But a lot of technology in the zip code of where we play, which is both observability and security, many other companies are definitively policing employees, whereas we're trying to effectively scale innovation. and good workflows that drive safe adoption.
I love that. I love that. And creepy is one of those words that catches your attention. So it's fine because you don't want to be creepy. So let's now fast forward to 2030. What does a future power by Lanai feel like to the everyday person?
Well, again, Lanai exists to empower humans to do extraordinary things with AI. So I think overall, AI will fade into the background of our lives, not because it's less important, but because it's ubiquitous. Just like, you know, once upon a time there were digital companies and there were brick and mortar companies. And now everyone's a digital company.
The value will shift from AI itself to AI intelligence. So every organization will effectively have dual workforces. your human workforce and your AI workforce. And this is not so distant. I mean, this is happening for power users and you may feel this. You have an editor on your team and you have a production assistant on your team.
If you're using AI in real ways, you start seeing how you are working in harmony because systems like Lanai will have eliminated the friction and the risk. The everyday person won't think about using AI. They'll just accomplish more.
And their effort is going to be applied to places that are different than where they have to spend time today as a result of AI taking over some of those more routine, potentially draining areas. workflows that you have to take care of right now.
Right. Right. Yep. No, that's amazing. And we have had guests where they are saying, and they help people set up these AI human teams. Like there are a collaborative team where half of them might be AI agents and half of them might be humans. And so, like you said, we're, we're pretty much already there. So.
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Chapter 6: What ethical considerations arise with AI use?
And that is not just inefficient. That is super reckless. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So we obviously have listeners out there that are like, oh my goodness, I just tasked my team or, you know, several of my teams to go out there and use AI and become more efficient without guardrails. Talk to us about one thing that our listeners who are in these roles can try, build, or with Lanai to feel this AI magic and to see a difference?
So first of all, we have a waiting list for Lanai. So if you have a large workforce and you're trying to navigate the complexity that comes with trying to scale AI innovation, we definitely want to talk to you, but you wouldn't be able to use it right away as we're early in going to market and right now cannot accommodate all the demand.
But here's a simple exercise that will give you a taste of what Lanai can reveal without having us, which is create a five question anonymous survey asking your teams which AI tools they're actually using day to day and for what tasks. OK, which AI are they using day to day and for what tasks?
And you have to make it anonymous because people are not going to want to have some sort of negative consequence for being honest. And the results will surprise you. Most leaders discover their teams are using three to five X more AI tools than they realized. Often for use cases they never imagined. So one engineering leader found her team using Claude to debug code.
That was not something she thought was happening. They had an AI specific tool, but that actually drove a ton of productivity gains. So that will give you some idea, that quick visibility exercise will give you an idea of like, wow, there are hidden risks, sure, but there's also breakthrough innovation, right? And when you're ready, we will be right there to help you.
But that's the type of always on revelation that we can provide.
I love that. I'm actually going to do that this week. What is today? Yes, I'm doing that this week because I feel like I know the tools that they're using because we talk about it every Monday and et cetera. But you're right. There are so many other tools that they could be using that we don't even know about. So that is amazing. Thank you for that.
And then we'll wait to, you know, get off the wait list from there. Okay. Dr. T, your grandfather did. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. So one important question that we always have when we lead with AI is what we call from one genius to another. And that's where our previous guest has a question for you, Lexi.
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Chapter 7: How can leaders create a safe AI environment?
Yeah, I don't want AI writing my kids' schoolwork. Okay. Because the difficult cognitive stretching that happens when my 15 year old struggles through an analytical essay, as she was doing last night, or when my 12 year old puzzles over how to express an original idea. That's where the actual learning lives. Right.
And it's precisely what AI circumvents with its frictionless, effortless, eloquence, you know, make me sound like, insert name. And that teaches them nothing but dependence on digital crutches. Right. You know, what's fascinating is that that does connect with what we do at Lanai.
We want to help organizations identify where AI creates genuine value versus undermining the core elements of human capabilities. You know, people say, are you a tech optimist or a tech pessimist? And it's just such a wrong framing of the question. I'm pragmatic that the goal isn't one or the other. It's both working together to improve the
society and community and that starts with you know making sure that our kids really learn how to think critically about big problems because we need them thinking about big problems
We do. We do. And I have a number of colleagues that are professors at universities and they always say they can tell when someone has used, you know, chat GPT or whatever for it. And they just don't know how to get around it. But it is so critical that we do have people kind of thinking creatively and and and and think critically. So I love that. I love that answer. Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
Awesome. So now we have our bonus rapid fire. We have four questions that I'm going to ramble off. You give an answer. So our listeners can see what you think. Most overrated tech trend.
Agents.
Agents. Most underhyped AI breakthrough.
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Chapter 8: What are the success stories from using Lanai's platform?
Okay.
One book everyone should read. The Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford. Okay. I'm going to write that one down.
The boldest AI prediction you believe.
That unless we equip leaders with visibility and guardrails like Lanai provides... AI will automate more jobs than it will create. Wow. Wow. Love that.
Absolutely love that. So Lexi, I have totally enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for all of your look. Go Nuggets and telling us about Lanai. I know you have a wait list. We know. And so that makes people want it even more. But how can we get in contact with you and the company? What are all the different channels?
Thanks. WithLinai.com is our website and you can sign up there to say you're interested and we'll get back to you. If for whatever reason we don't, please follow us on LinkedIn. Linai and me personally, Lexi Reese, I post a lot of content and we have learning journeys for leaders that are help you get oriented into AI in the world, in the enterprise.
And you can, I really encourage people to assign reading to their teams and spend 15 minutes or 30 minutes at your next team meeting saying, what did you, what do you feel or what are you thinking or what will you do differently as a result of having read or watched these things together?
Got it. And these learning journeys, are these on LinkedIn? These are on our website. On your website. Okay.
Yeah, with lanai.com.
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