Vendors asking forward deployed engineers to make good on trillion-dollar AI bet

During a flight on Marc Benioff’s private jet last year, the Salesforce CEO apparently subjected his company’s senior execs to a four-hour montage of Palantir CEO Alex Karp holding forth on the value of forward-deployed engineers (FDEs). The experience — which might have led anyone else to seek the emergency exit — was a lesson for Michael Spencer, Salesforce veep for finance and strategy, about the value of FDEs in boosting sales at Palantir, whose mantra is "land and expand." He shared the ane