Future of Revenue AI: From Hospital Bed to Industry Titan

When history books are written about this era of artificial intelligence, Oleg Rogynskyy will not be a footnote; he will be a headline. His story reads like a Silicon Valley screenplay: a young immigrant with a name full of vowels and vision, battling adversity, inventing the future, and rewriting the rules of sales itself.

“I spent six months in a hospital bed and came out with $2 million in ARR for my first company,” Oleg told me with a grin. Most people would have surrendered. Instead, he dialed; he sold; he built. That’s not just resilience – it’s genius under pressure.

Today, as CEO of People.ai, Oleg leads the charge in a market many didn’t see coming: revenue AI. And if you think sales is safe from automation, Oleg has a message for you: The future is already here.

From Gut Feeling to Guided Missiles

For decades, sales has relied on instinct. The “smile and dial” generation prized hustle over data. Forecasts were more finger-in-the-wind than precision instrument. As Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, put it: “Too many leaders are flying blind. AI isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the new cockpit.”

Oleg saw that truth long before most. In 2016, when People.ai was in the same Y Combinator batch as OpenAI and Scale AI, he was already obsessing over activity data – the lifeblood of sales performance. At the time, salespeople still had to manually type everything into CRM systems, filling out 20 or 30 fields after every call. Other industries, such as medicine and cloud computing, were swimming in activity data. Sales? It was stuck in spreadsheets.

“We knew, one day, AI would know what to do with the data,” Oleg recalls. “We just didn’t know if it would be 2020, 2030, or 2040. But it was inevitable.”

That inevitability is now reality. Today, People.ai automates what once seemed untouchable: deal inspection, forecasting, account planning, coaching, proposal generation. Not support functions, not side tasks, but the very workflows that define sales.

The Arms Races for Revenue Data

In Silicon Valley, the mantra has always been, “Whoever controls the data wins.” Oleg predicted years ago there would be an arms race for unique, proprietary revenue data sets. He was right.

Consider the recent Clari-Salesloft merger. Combined, they now claim oversight of $10 trillion in revenue data. To some, that sounds like empire building. To Oleg, it sounds like validation.

“From day zero in 2016, we built People.ai as a persistent data platform. Others leaned on Salesforce APIs until 2019 or 2020. By then, we had years of structured data,” he told me.

McKinsey analysts echo this view: “The winners in AI will not be those with the best algorithms, but those with the deepest proprietary data.” On that battlefield, People.ai’s head start looks like a moat.

The Symphony of Revenue Orchestration

To understand Oleg’s vision, imagine a symphony. For too long, companies have played discordant notes – sales chasing one tune, marketing another, customer success improvising in the corner. Chaos in the concert hall.

What Oleg offers is not just a tool; it’s a conductor’s baton. Revenue orchestration means every team, every conversation, every customer interaction is harmonized on the same sheet of music.

“As COO, you’re the orchestra leader,” Oleg explains. “But the sheet of music is activity data. We’ve been collecting it since 2016. Now AI can read it, understand it, and make it actionable at scale.”

The results? Red Hat has nearly a decade of revenue activity data. With People.ai’s AI-first approach, they can now predict, prioritize, and act with a level of precision competitors can’t touch. Zoom reportedly boosted bookings by 42% with People.ai – even before the newest AI breakthroughs.

When Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, says, “AI is going to be the greatest productivity accelerator of our time,” this is exactly what he means.

AI Agents: Partners or Replacements?

Every revolution brings fear. The Luddites smashed looms. Programmers today worry about AI writing code. And salespeople? They wonder: Will AI agents replace me?

Oleg is blunt. “Forecasting, coaching, account planning, proposal generation, strategic meetings, prospecting, ICP generation – gone. All automated before the end of this year,” he predicts.

But he’s equally clear on what remains. “AI can’t replace the coffee meeting. The human handshake. The spark of trust. That’s the Navy SEAL class of sellers – the few, the elite, armed with AI to focus on the right customer, at the right time, with the right value.”

It’s a chilling and inspiring vision. Fewer sellers, but stronger ones. Less noise, more value. As Gartner’s Craig Rosenberg notes, “AI won’t kill sales; it will kill bad selling.”

Patents, Proofs, and the Power of Persistence

One measure of brilliance is intellectual property. People.ai has more than 100 granted patents, with dozens more under review. That’s not just innovation; it’s insulation. Competitors may dabble, but Oleg owns the blueprints.

Another measure is persistence. Remember, Oleg once closed deals from a hospital bed. That determination now fuels a company redefining an entire industry.

“I started as a BDR in 2006 with a Nortel brick phone,” he reminisces. “There was something romantic about smiling and dialing. But that world is gone. Sellers now must be Navy SEALs.”

A Market Ripe for Disruption

Timing is everything. Right now, incumbents like Clari are bogged down in private equity acquisitions. The recent merger between Clari and Salesloft has created what Rogynskyy sees as a significant market opportunity. “Their customers are calling us right now and saying, ‘Hey, Clari is not a cheap solution. Vista is definitely not looking to discount it further. Our renewal is coming up. What’s your plan?’”

And at that moment, Oleg steps up with an AI-first platform ready to scale.

“Forecasting is actually very easy to automate with AI. We’ve rebuilt it from the ground up in 2025,” Oleg told me. “Couldn’t ask for a better market moment.”

Harvard Business Review recently wrote: “The next decade will not belong to the companies with the biggest sales forces but to those with the smartest sales infrastructure.” Oleg is building that infrastructure brick by brick, data point by data point.

The Man Who Sees Around Corners

Every industry has its visionaries. Jobs saw design. Musk saw rockets. Oleg Rogynskyy sees sales not as it is but as it will be.

He describes People.ai as “on-demand business development consulting.” I call it something else: a guidance system – like GPS for revenue. You set the destination and the AI not only maps the fastest route; it also warns of roadblocks, offers detours, and learns your driving style along the way.

“AI is the appraisal tool that turns chaos into clarity, then clarity into action,” I told Oleg during our conversation. He nodded because he knows: The future isn’t about more tools; it’s about meaningful action, driven by data, executed with precision. 

Oleg Rogynskyy is not building a company; he’s building a category. He’s turning sales from art into science, from intuition into intelligence, from chaos into orchestration.

“AI doesn’t care,” he once said. “It doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t forget. But it needs context. And that’s what we do best in the world.”

Context is king. Action is queen. And Oleg? He’s the maestro of the new revenue symphony.

When the curtain rises on the next era of business, don’t be surprised if Oleg is standing center stage – baton in hand, leading the orchestra of revenue AI into the future.

To learn more, visit www.people.ai.