It all started with a conversation John Chambers had with Dan Wright recently.
Chambers is the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Charleston native who has never stopped being bullish on his home state.
Wright is the CEO of DataRobot, an enterprise that uses artificial intelligence to mine solutions in the day-to-day of everything from corporate structure to coronavirus response.
The results of that chat were on full display in a meeting room at WVU’s Erickson Alumni Center on Wednesday afternoon.
That’s where and when it was announced the San Francisco-based company is opening an office in Morgantown.
DataRobot, which made its first hire from Morgantown the day before, will be housed in Vantage Ventures, an entrepreneurial firm here.
As he learned more and more about West Virginia, Wright said he became more and more convinced it would be a sound move to found a new office in the place Chambers has taken to referring to as a “start-up state.”
There’s no reason, he said, the state’s hills and hollows can’t be transformed to hubs of innovation.
“West Virginia has a pioneering spirit,” the CEO said. “The same way DataRobot does.”
Pioneers, though, WVU President Gordon Gee said, don’t always get a good payout – something that’s become a languishing condition here.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to harness change and make it work for us,” Gee said.
J.B. McCuskey, the state’s auditor, carved out an observation likely to resonate with most West Virginia natives.
“AI is the new coal,” he said.
And AI by way of DataRobot, he said, means tapping in, the way business was able to do when coal was king.
Or, “opening windows to our own data,” he said.
It also means, the auditor added, answering a perennial budget question: “How do we utilize an amount of money, that is never enough, to solve the state’s problems in the best way?”
Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s COVID-19 czar and vice president and dean of WVU Health Sciences, said DataRobot and its AI efforts will enhance the state’s response to the pandemic, which is still shrouding the state.
That’s why Gov. Jim Justice appeared before the audience via Zoom for the announcement, even though he in a State Police vehicle in the Erickson parking lot.
Justice had a possible exposure to the virus last Friday. Though fully vaccinated, he didn’t want to take chances as he waited for his test result, he said.
“I think it’d be kind of selfish for me to come in there right now,” Justice said, while welcoming the company to West Virginia.
Meanwhile, the outcome of the governor’s test wasn’t immediately known – though Marsh assured his safety.
“He wanted to make sure he was working with an abundance of concern for everybody in this room,” Marsh said. “Just like he’s done for the entire pandemic for the state of West Virginia.”
Concern was the watchword, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said in pre-recorded remarks aired for the event.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to acknowledge the importance of innovation and technology to address critical needs in the areas such as rural health, pandemic and crisis response,” he said.
His counterpart, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who appeared live via Zoom, drew laughs with her remarks, which were critical of the current dynamic in the place where she and Manchin do their work.
“I was going to crack a joke on artificial intelligence because you can see the real intelligence in Washington, D.C., isn’t working all that great.”
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