How Autodesk's $350M Bet Targets AI Fear at Work

Autodesk is putting $350 million into training and tools to help people use artificial intelligence at work. Chief marketing officer Dara Treseder, speaking at the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival, said the investment is meant to close a gap the company found in its own research.

Treseder cited the company's recent AI jobs report. "It showed that while 82% of people are very comfortable using LLMs in their daily lives, only a third of people are comfortable using AI in their job," she said. Respondents told Autodesk they worry AI might not work properly or will make humans irrelevant.

"That education is so key, not only to give people the skills and the talent," Treseder said, "but to change the mindset."

The spending covers both internal training for Autodesk's own workforce and programs for the architects, engineers and designers who use its software. CAD tools like AutoCAD are already incorporating generative AI features that suggest design alternatives, and the company needs its users to adopt them to justify the product roadmap.

The fear pattern Autodesk describes is familiar across enterprise software. Workers adopt chatbots at home but freeze when the same technology touches their job responsibilities. Treseder argued that the bottleneck is not software capability but confidence, and that the $350 million is as much a marketing expense as an education one.

For Autodesk investors, the question is how quickly that confidence builds. The company sells subscriptions, not one-time licenses, so broader user adoption directly feeds recurring revenue. If the training spend shifts the comfort ratio from one-in-three toward the consumer baseline, it could lift retention and upgrade rates across the customer base.