Enterprise AI's quiet phase: Canva and Expedia on adoption without the hype
Two enterprise talks this week skip the demos and discuss how AI actually gets chosen and used.
- Expedia maintains about six AI tools and picked Glean as its AI "front door" for security, governance, and user trust, the company says. Self-reported m:…8655
- Canva reports 93% weekly active users across its generative AI assistants and applies a 4x productivity multiplier to AI-assisted work, the company says. Self-reported m:…4273
- Accel led a $34 million round for Scuba, founded by ex-Slack CPO Noah Desai Weiss, to give AI agents organizational context, the company says. Self-reported m:…6464
- Both Expedia and Canva say they measure AI success by behavioral and accountability shifts — not raw usage counts. Self-reported m:…8655
The front door problem
Expedia's AI story starts with a practical question: where do employees actually go when they want AI help? Becky Wilson, who leads the employee digital experience team, describes the company's answer as a "front door" — Glean, chosen for security, governance, and user trust, giving people one clear place to start without forcing everyone through a single rigid workflow. m:…8655
The honest part is what sits behind the door. Expedia maintains roughly six AI tools: SaaS-embedded assistants in Microsoft, Slack, and Zoom, plus frontier models. The front door doesn't replace the sprawl; it organizes it. The goal, as Expedia's AI enablement team frames it, is getting employees to treat AI as a collaborator — giving feedback on responses rather than abandoning a tool after the first bad answer. Alex Buono leads that AI enablement effort out of learning and development. m:…8655
And the metric that matters isn't logins. Expedia says it measures success by behavioral shifts — employees proactively consulting AI before escalating tactical questions to leadership. That's a harder number to game than weekly active users, and a more honest signal that the tool is doing work. m:…8655
The human center
Canva's version of the same story runs through people, not portals. The company approved Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude for company-wide use in six days, and says adoption of its request-based AI model passed 90% of employees. Speed of rollout is the easy part; Canva's leadership is explicit that the hard part was investing in employee skills alongside the tools. m:…4273
By October 2025, the company reports 93% weekly active users across its generative AI assistants, and it applies a 4x productivity multiplier to account for what it sees as the compounding value of AI-assisted work. Take the multiplier with a grain of salt — it's Canva's own math — but the direction is notable: they're trying to measure impact per function instead of counting seats. m:…4273
Canva says it's now shifting toward AI accountability in three areas: human quality, financial accountability, and safety and scalability. Its definition of "AI native" is telling: rethinking how people, teams, and technology work together, not just handing everyone a chatbot. The through line with Expedia is the same — the technology was the easy purchase; the operating model is the actual project. m:…4273
The context layer
Underneath both stories sits an infrastructure question: AI tools are only as good as the organizational context they can reach. That's the bet Accel just made, leading a $34 million round for Scuba, founded by former Slack CPO Noah Desai Weiss and former Browser Company engineering lead Dolapo Falola. The pitch: capture decisions, threads, and documents so agents act with the company's memory, not just a prompt. m:…6464
Scuba is in beta with what the company describes as hundreds of early users, who are using it for product strategy work and — tellingly — to reduce meeting frequency. Andrew Braccia of Accel puts the thesis bluntly: a prompt alone can't carry the full weight of an organization's knowledge, and the defining teams of the next decade will be the ones whose agents understand their values, judgment, and history. m:…6464
Note the symmetry: Canva launched Glean inside its internal directory back in October 2023, and Expedia now uses Glean as its front door. The enterprise AI stack is converging on the same realization — the scarce resource isn't models, it's trusted access to what the company already knows. m:…4273
What this phase looks like
Put the three together and enterprise AI's current phase has a shape: pick a front door, keep humans in the loop, and invest in the context layer underneath. Nobody in these stories is talking about replacing workers. They're talking about governance, measurement, and the unglamorous work of getting thousands of employees to change habits. m:…8655 m:…4273
The open question both companies are circling is whether any of this shows up in output, not just activity. Behavioral shifts and accountability frameworks are better than vanity metrics, but they're still inputs. The companies that figure out how to measure AI's contribution to actual decisions — not just faster drafts — will be the ones with something worth copying. m:…6464
What is still unresolved
- Whether Canva's 4x productivity multiplier corresponds to measurable output gains or just faster activity.
- How Expedia governs the six-tool sprawl behind its Glean front door as agent capabilities expand.
- Whether Scuba's beta users retain the product once the novelty wears off and it has to compete with incumbents' context features.
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