In mid-2025, eight years into his tenure as CEO, Andrew Anagnost is navigating Autodesk through its most rapid period of change, driven by three strategic vectors: optimizing its go-to-market function, growing new “design and make” businesses, and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across its portfolio. Having successfully transitioned the company to a subscription model and initiated major organizational shifts since 2017, Anagnost now faced a landscape reshaped by AI’s disruptive potential. The first strategic vector involved optimizing the go-to-market machine to deliver industry-leading margins after a multiyear overhaul that shifted from a channel-centric, buy-sell model to a direct-to-customer, commission-based structure. The second focused on accelerating growth in new businesses, particularly the industry cloud platforms—Fusion (manufacturing), Forma (AEC), and Flow (M&E)—which were growing significantly faster than the core design business and are critical to building a more defensible, full life-cycle company. The third and most transformative vector was the pervasive integration of AI. Anagnost believed AI, particularly large language models and Autodesk’s own industry-specific foundation models, would render traditional user interfaces obsolete within a decade and fundamentally alter customer workflows. This AI-driven shift was central to enhancing product capabilities, solving customer capacity problems, and defending against a new wave of agile, AI-native startups. The case explored Anagnost’s leadership in balancing these transformations, managing intense customer and competitive pressures, and navigating shareholder relations, all while reimagining the future of design and make.
