Tamara Chuang | Business/Technology Reporter
Quick links: AI at work | Ibotta’s upcoming IPO | Boom Supersonic’s flight | Denver inflation | Spectrum AMT expands
It’s been a big month for Colorado’s homegrown technology companies, including one that’s going public this month, another speeding toward breaking the sound barrier and a new CNBC special about technology companies in Denver and Boulder. But one with big news that’s special to What’s Working readers is Guild, the Denver company that started in 2015 and built a system to help workers access education as an employment benefit.
Guild has since connected millions of frontline workers at companies like Chipotle and Walmart to tuition-free accredited educational and career-changing courses. The company has grown to about 1,200 employees, half based in Colorado. Popular with investors, Guild reached unicorn status with a billion-dollar valuation in 2019. This month, it promoted Bijal Shah to CEO, a position long held by cofounder Rachel Romer.
“If you’d told me I was going to become CEO of Guild I would have been like, no, that’s Rachel,” said Shah, whose analytical and data-heavy background helped the company grow from tens of learning programs to more than 2,000. “I love connecting the dots. I love the notion of scaling organizations and building and empowering teams.”
Shah took over as interim CEO when the vivacious Romer suffered a stroke in August. The recovering Romer shared her story last week for the first time publicly, coinciding with Shah being named CEO. Shah, who calls Romer “visionary and resilient,” joined Guild in 2018 and in various roles oversaw product, analytics, technology and payments and the platform. To take on the new role as CEO, she’s had to step back a bit to focus on the company as a whole, letting her senior leadership team handle the daily details.
“My job has now shifted to making sure we are focused on the right priorities,” said Shah, whose internal nickname is Chief Dot Connector, “and making sure that people have an understanding of where we’re headed and why we’re trying to go there and the impact we’re trying to drive in the world and making sure that I’m helping to connect the dots across the organization so that the things we do can have the greatest impact and kind of the shortest amount of time.”
It’s not just about new skills
She’s also dealing with the current trend and challenges of artificial intelligence and the workforce. Automating the work of frontline employees has been happening for decades, with newer forms, like robots taking fast-food orders, already in existence. It’s the newer generative artificial intelligence technology that has more companies excited, but also scrambling.
Generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E can produce text answers, images and videos that seem like legitimate human responses. And those have only been publicly available since late 2022. Companies like Guild are already seeing the impact in the workplace.
But instead of figuring out what new skills those workers now need, Guild’s approach is to identify the activities the workers are doing today and what they will be doing in the future.
“Today, the activity could be something like writing emails. You could be proficient at it. You could be excellent at it. When we think about the future, even for someone like you and I, the amount of time we will spend crafting an email from scratch is going to go down drastically,” Shah said. “Already today, you can have Google or Gmail auto reply for you with a suggested response. And we become editors in chief to that email versus actually being the ones to draft that email.”
Guild looks at the entire workforce of a company to determine what activities will likely get automated or augmented. Then they take what humans are better at — critical thinking, creative problem solving — to determine how to help staff advance alongside automation.
“We’re about to see a huge workforce transformation because of things like LLMs (large language models), ChatGPT, etc., where it is just becoming way easier and way more innate for AI to sit right alongside you while you’re doing your job,” she said. “That wasn’t really true 24 months ago.”
AI invades the workplace
A report from IT consultancy Cognizant this year put numbers to the disruption potential of generative AI as it seeps into the workplace. It’ll have a $1 trillion impact on the national GDP and in the next 10 years, 90% of the jobs could be disrupted in some way, from the C-level on down.
Disruption could be considered positive or negative. On one hand, generative AI could reduce the tasks required by entry-level number crunchers, customer service representatives and office assistants. But on the other hand, that could ease current staffing challenges by automating tasks a worker isn’t particularly strong at — “an equity analyst may not need to be a mathematical expert if generative AI handles that part of the job,” the report said.
Cognizant graded 1,000 professions an “exposure score,” meaning the higher the rating, the greater chance that job will be affected by AI for better or for worse. An HVAC technician, for example, has a low exposure score of 5% because generative AI is limited in how it can assist someone working on heating and air conditioning units. Computer science jobs, however, are at 62% although those professionals have an easier time finding another job.
“Jobs involving credit analysis, computer programming, web development, database administration and graphic design already have an exposure score of about 50%. By 2032, as the technology advances, exposure scores for some of these jobs will climb to 80%,” according to the Cognizant report.
Last October, Guild introduced a new package of AI courses that bundled 40 existing AI programs in its Learning Marketplace. The courses are aimed at helping workers gain proficiency with AI, exploring the ethics, building AI tools and training leaders. Like all of Guild’s programs, the courses are paid by employers and offered to employees as a benefit.
“We’ve come a long way since just thinking about ed benefits and access to ed benefits,” Shah said. “We spent a lot of time with very large employers today thinking about the future of work, the impact that AI will have on the future of work and what that will mean for roles and how we think about upskilling and reskilling their employee populations to ensure that people have a path as the workforce gets disrupted.”
More BIG news from local tech companies:
➔ Ibotta IPO — The Denver company spilled the details (here’s the S1 filing) of its public-stock debut Monday. The cash-back and digital coupon app that started in 2011 plans to sell nearly 2.5 million shares (another 3.1 million are held by existing shareholders, including Walmart) priced between $76 to $84 per share next week during its initial public offering. The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “IBTA.” In its prospectus, Ibotta said its revenues grew 76% last year to $243.9 million and the company made a profit of $38.1 billion, compared to a net loss in the prior year. At the end of last year, Ibotta employed 815 people. The company previously raised private funding that valued it at $1 billion in 2019. More coverage: Fortune, Reuters
➔ Quantinuum’s error-free qubits — The Broomfield-based quantum computing company reached another breakthrough for the qubit industry this month. Qubits are similar to computer data bits but can be used to calculate very complex problems more efficiently. But the challenge has been error-free qubits. Alongside a team from Microsoft, Quantinuum’s team “demonstrated the ability to run 14,000 independent instances of a quantum circuit error-free,” according to the companies. That translated to error rates “800 times lower than corresponding physical error rates.” Tech-news site TechCrunch called it “a big deal.”
➔ Boom Supersonic’s first flight — The Centennial-based supersonic jet developer completed its first successful flight of XB-1 aircraft in Mojave, California, last month. The jet reached speeds of 238 knots, or 273 miles per hour, according to the company. While that’s not supersonic speeds that break the sound barrier (sound travels at around 768 mph), Boom officials said this was normal for an inaugural flight. “The team will systematically expand XB-1’s flight envelope to confirm its performance and handling qualities through higher speeds, including supersonic flight,” the company said in a statement to The Colorado Sun. Boom has been at it since 2014 with a goal of building a faster way to get travelers to faraway destinations at a price more affordable and safer than the defunct Concorde. Watch: Boom’s XB-1 flight video
Denver’s inflation was lower than the U.S. last month
When the U.S. consumer price index for March was released Wednesday, the reaction to a higher-than-expected 3.5% inflation rate focused on the likelihood that the Federal Reserve would postpone lowering interest rates.
But the Denver metro area went in the opposite direction. Its inflation rate fell to 2.8% in March compared with a year ago, and was lower than its 3.5% in January. It was also lower than the U.S. for the first time in more than a year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics credited the drop in local gasoline prices, plus the price of food at the grocery store.
Could Denver be leading the way to taming inflation? The metro area, after all, felt the sting of 9.1% inflation in March 2022, two months before the rest of the nation did.
Some local economists had their doubts that Colorado would continue to see slower price growth. Gary Horvath, an economist at Cber.co in Broomfield, said “relief might be temporary as it will likely bounce back when the summer tourist season starts.”
It’s also just one month and “annual rates of growth still tend to come out higher,” noted Brian Lewandowski, executive director University of Colorado Leeds Business School’s Business Research Division. Denver’s monthly inflation has been slower than the U.S. 18 times but higher 46 times.
Could you tell? Do you feel like prices are finally stabilizing? Take the reader poll HERE.
➔ ICYMI: Denver inflation drops to 2.8%, opposite the national trend of rising prices. The Denver region typically has higher inflation than the rest of the nation. Prices still rose, but lower gasoline costs in March are credited for the slowdown. >> Read story
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Hospitals suing patients over unpaid bills would have to put their names on lawsuits under new Colorado measure. The bill follows a Colorado Sun and 9News investigation into UCHealth’s practice of suing thousands of patients per year under the names of debt-collection companies. >> Read story
➔ Colorado’s $40.6B budget is nearing final passage. Here’s what’s in it. The 2024-25 spending plan invests heavily in state workers, health care services, K-12 and higher education. But the budget leaves a number of unanswered questions for the final month of the legislative session. >> Read story
➔ Denver restores public services, creates asylum-seeker job program as part of expected $90 million in migrant aid. The $90 million in estimated spending on migrant services in 2024 is about half as much as was predicted back in January. >> Read story
➔ Yes, you’ll have to pay twice, and other passenger train news for Colorado. Colorado Sun’s panel with top train expansion advocates reflects some harsh truths and many lingering questions. >> Read story
➔ Pagosa Springs has a housing crisis. Somehow, CHiPs star Erik Estrada is part of the answer. Estrada once marketed real estate for a shifty investment company from California. Now, Archuleta County is using the repossessed lots for critical workforce housing. >> Read story
➔ How the “for-cause eviction” bill passed by the Colorado legislature would affect renters and landlords. House Bill 1098 was approved by the House in February and then by the Senate at the end of March. Gov. Jared Polis has not committed to signing the measure. >> Read story
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Other working bits
➔ Spectrum AMT sticks with Colorado Springs for expansion. Spectrum Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, often tapped by aerospace companies to make electronic components and devices, said Tuesday it will expand its Colorado Springs manufacturing plant and build a 12,000-square-foot facility. The company, which employs 54 Coloradans, expects to add 100 jobs with an average annual wage of $85,407. Jobs to fill range from marketing and sales positions to engineers, inspectors and technicians. Should Spectrum AMT make that goal in eight years, it’ll receive up to $1,281,974 from the state’s Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit. The city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County also provided incentives valued at $275,496, according to the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
➔ Checkr cuts 92 jobs in Denver. Background-checking firm Checkr notified the state April 9 that it is laying off 92 employees who work at its Denver office on 18th Street. No reason was given, but the San Francisco-based company, which chose Denver in 2019 to add a second headquarters, told tech news site TechCrunch that the job cuts were “in response to economic conditions.” The company also cut another 290 employees in San Francisco and other locations. In 2019, the state’s Economic Development Commission approved a $27.9 million job-growth tax credit for the company if they created 1,472 new jobs. As of Friday, Checkr hasn’t received any tax credits from the state, officials with the state’s economic development office confirmed.
➔ Colorado’s nonprofits are a big business. Nonprofit organizations in Colorado support nearly 10% of all jobs in the state, according to the latest economic impact report from the Colorado Nonprofit Association and its partners. Most is direct employment of about 182,000 nonprofits employees. The rest is based on how much those workers spend in the state to live and, in turn, help support jobs in their own communities. Combined with financial stats like $1.4 billion in grants and contributing $25 billion to the state’s GDP, the overall economic impact of nonprofits in the state was $62 billion, according to the report. >> Read report
➔ Taxes are due Monday, April 15. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet and still have questions, the IRS has special Saturday hours at 70 Taxpayer Assistance Centers nationwide (see the list). Only one is in Colorado, at 1999 Broadway in Denver. But if the Monday deadline is too soon, you can file an extension until Oct. 15. >> IRS tax tools and support
Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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