David Laker takes charge of Seismic revenue. November 10, 2026 Seismic has appointed David Laker as Chief Revenue Officer. He succeeds Hayden Stafford, who retires as President and Chief Revenue Officer after nearly five years at the firm. Stafford will remain as a strategic advisor. Laker will lead global sales, pre-sales, revenue operations, sales development and value teams. His remit centres on stronger execution and improved go-to-market performance. Rob Tarkoff, Chief Executive Officer, said, "Hayden helped build a strong business and GTM team, and I'm grateful he'll continue supporting Seismic as a strategic GTM advisor. "Dave understands firsthand the challenge our customers are solving by using AI, data and human expertise to improve revenue execution. He spent his career building global organisations, and brings both the operator's and the customer's perspective to Seismic. That perspective will help us stay focused on what customers need and where we can help them achieve more." The transition follows Seismic's merger with Highspot. Laker will therefore oversee revenue functions across a recently combined business, rather than simply inherit the pre-merger organisation. Who is David Laker. Laker most recently served as Guidewire Software's Chief Commercial Officer, following his role as Chief Sales Officer. He has more than three decades of enterprise customer and go-to-market experience. Guidewire's October 2022 appointment announcement provides specific career context. He previously led financial services and banking for Oracle's North America Cloud and Technology business as Senior Vice President. Oracle hired him in 2013. Guidewire describes his work helping customers develop cloud strategies and identify business value. Before Oracle he worked at Salesforce as a Global Senior Vice President, building out its industry go-to-market strategy. Earlier, he held several leadership positions at SAP. He holds a BS degree from the University of Missouri. Laker commented, "Having been a customer of both Seismic and Highspot, I know the difference these platforms can make for a GTM team," said Laker. "When you invest in your people, you want to see that investment show up in how they work with customers and the results they deliver. "Seismic helps teams bring the right knowledge, judgment and guidance to every customer engagement. I'm excited to build on what Hayden and the team have accomplished and help all our customers drive impact." Seismic after the Highspot merger. Seismic announced its merged with Highspot in February 2026, with the transaction completing in August 2026. The combined business serves 2,500 customers and more than 3.5 million users worldwide. Its platform brings together content, coaching, buyer engagement and seller insights to support revenue execution. The merger announcement sets out planned annual research and development investment exceeding $100 million. That is an investment commitment, not evidence of delivered spending. During Staffords tenure ARR rose from $250 to $500 million, including Highspot figures. In September Tarkoff (in Geekwire) revealed revenues of $600 million, with Highspot contributing $200 million. This is the vibrant and successfully growing revenue organisation that Laker will now lead. The appointment release says annual recurring revenue rose from $250 million to $600 million during Stafford's tenure, including the merger. That comparison should not be mistaken for organic growth. Enterprise times: what does this mean. For Seismic, this is a revenue leadership handover during integration. Laker's remit spans the functions needed to align account strategy, pipeline management and customer value. Stafford's advisory role offers continuity, although the release does not detail its duration. Customers should judge the transition through support quality, clear account ownership and evidence of business outcomes. Highspot's merger guidance says there are no migration plans for Highspot by Seismic customers. It also promises continued platform support and investment. Those commitments provide a baseline against which customers can assess subsequent decisions. Partners should seek clarity on joint account planning, integrations and sales engagement. The appointment release announces no partner programme changes. A larger vendor could expand opportunities, but integration could also complicate responsibilities. Competitors face a combined business with greater scale and a stated investment programme. That does not guarantee better execution. They may compete through simpler deployment, clearer pricing or specialist capabilities. The central test is whether Seismic converts its enlarged footprint into consistent customer value. Neither the appointment nor the merger figures establish that outcome. Renewal experience, adoption and demonstrable revenue impact will matter more than the leadership announcement alone.

Expedia hired Mike Davis to train its sales team. But he's not ready to do the job himself. Davis is a next-generation AI agent from Seismic, a San Diego-based company valued at $6 billion. PUBLISHED: October 23, 2026 at 6:19 PM EDT UPDATED: October 23, 2026 at 6:23 PM EDT Meet Mike Davis. He's middle-aged, has jet-black hair, and technically works at Expedia Group. "He's kind of a legend at our company," said Beth Potter, Expedia's senior manager of field enablement. But Mike Davis isn't a person. He's an AI agent built by Seismic, a San Diego company that recently showcased him along with a roster of other AI tools at its 11th annual conference in Carlsbad. Seismic, a privately held company valued at $6 billion, makes its money by integrating AI into the sales teams of large companies. The guest list at the conference read like Silicon Valley Scrabble: Meta, Microsoft, GitHub, Uber. Add in major law firms, finance giants, hospital systems and insurers, all showing off their Seismic AI agents or learning how to integrate their own. Between sessions, The San Diego Union-Tribune asked Seismic CEO Rob Tarkoff a seemingly obvious question that most people have a hard time answering: How are companies actually using AI? New-age agents. Seismic recently released a handful of new tools that can work autonomously on behalf of, or in collaboration with, a company's sales team. Deal Agent looks at a sales team's emails, meetings and customer data to spot deals at risk and suggest what to do next. Another agent checks the company's materials for anything outdated or contradictory and suggests fixes. These bots either outright replace administrative roles or dramatically decrease employees' workloads, according to a number of companies that use the San Diego company's software. At IBM, meeting preparation now takes a fraction of the time, from "taking hours to taking 15 to 20 minutes," the company said. At Royal London Asset Management, AI bots answer hundreds of client questions every day. The firm's sales team tallied the time saved over a year and came to 10,000 hours. That works out to one bot doing the work of about 4.5 full-time employees. Meet Mike Davis. Mike Davis seemed to be the most tangible replacement of human work, though he wasn't marketed as such. He purports to mimic a great sales manager: He's always available, he gives detailed feedback. Doesn't judge, just helps the team. During a breakout session, Expedia showed a room full of sales managers, chief technology officers and developers how Mike Davis worked. Role-play agents like Mike Davis were trained on recorded conversations and realistic sales scenarios. Companies using Seismic's AI agent can upload specific products or features that are difficult to sell. Once the material is uploaded, sales managers can change Mike Davis' mood to be extremely cheap or skeptical before a session, to challenge reps. At the end of the call, the agent can tell sales reps the moment they lost the deal by analyzing tone of voice, vocabulary and hesitation during the conversation. When Expedia reps first sat down with Mike Davis, "they just couldn't believe the quality of it," Potter said. "It was so realistic." And the company seemed to profit: Reps who role-played with Mike Davis won 5% more deals on average, according to Expedia. Even though Mike Davis looks and acts like a human on a screen, the agent is just "correlating different signals to propose a hypothesis on empathy," Tarkoff said. The limits to the agent's empathy keep it from replacing humans, Tarkoff said. "These agents are task oriented," he said, explaining that even when people are unpredictable, the bots will try to stick to the script. Bullying bots. In one such interaction posted on Instagram, Derek, an AI agent tech recruiter, is shown onscreen as a 20-something tech bro in a rumpled sweatshirt, a poster of the Orion Nebula tacked to the wall behind him. "Tell me about yourself," Derek says to Graham Zip, an actual bearded tech bro trying to troll the AI agent. Zip: "My name is Chick Bongo and I'm a two-time Pumpernickel Fellow." Derek: "Wow, very impressive. Now tell me, how do you typically approach a project?" Zip: "We usually use the Dolores Method and a little possum clause." The agent smiles and nods. "I definitely know what you mean," Derek says. "A possum clause on the back end is a great way to wrap things up." At the next question, Zip bursts into fake tears. He allegedly advances to the next round anyway. Real replacement. In March, McDermott said that AI agents could push recent college graduate unemployment into the mid-30% range within the next couple of years. Asked about the potential for displacement of human employees, Tarkoff demurred. "I don't really have a lot of economic views," he said. "Typically, the goal is not to reduce the number of sellers," he said. "Our agents and our platform help take away a lot of the administrative tasks, so sellers can spend more time selling... hiring more people to do tasks that can be done by AI is neither rewarding for the employee nor good for the company." Despite merging with Highspot, another billion-dollar AI sales company, Tarkoff said Seismic has added dozens of new AI deployment roles for engineers and strategists who help other companies implement AI. Those new roles aren't necessary new hires, but a title transition for some engineers. "The doomerism around AI impacting jobs is not an accurate statement. It's just changed the nature of jobs as you would expect any technology to," said Tarkoff. But unlike the internet, AI agents have at times exhibited - or at least mimicked - human-like understanding, behavior that raises existential questions that even the pope has weighed in on. "I think about these things," Tarkoff said. "It's a societal issue we're going to have to face. But I don't talk to reporters about it."

Seismic's two platforms each named a Leader in Revenue Enablement Platforms by independent research firm. Following the Seismic and Highspot merger, both platforms receive a Leader recognition in Revenue Enablement Platforms, Q4 2026 analyst evaluation SAN DIEGO [October 21, 2026] - Seismic, the Go-To-Market Performance company, today announced that Seismic and Highspot by Seismic have each been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave(TM): Revenue Enablement Platforms, Q4 2026. The two platforms were evaluated independently before the companies completed their merger on August 18, 2026. The Seismic platform received the highest score possible in 15 evaluation criteria, including vision, innovation, and roadmap. The Highspot by Seismic platform received the highest score possible in 12 criteria, including vision, value insights, and customer care. In its assessment, Forrester states that Seismic is best suited for complex, regulated, global enterprises seeking broad enablement capabilities, deep services, and rigorous connections between learning, execution, and revenue outcomes. The report describes Highspot by Seismic's vision as "among the clearest in this market" and notes its connection between enablement activity and execution guidance. "Our ambition in bringing Seismic and Highspot together was to change what enablement makes possible," said Rob Tarkoff, Chief Executive Officer, Seismic. "Both platforms earned this recognition independently. We've brought together their strengths to help customers move beyond preparing teams to perform in the moments that win deals. With AI grounded in trusted company context, we can help revenue teams act with greater confidence, execute more consistently, and deliver measurable business outcomes." According to Forrester protocols, this evaluation represents the separate platform capabilities as of July 27, 2026. Since the evaluation, Seismic has continued to advance its vision for agentic revenue execution. At Seismic Shift 2026, the company introduced Deal Agent across both the Seismic and Highspot by Seismic platforms, bringing together CRM activity, meetings, emails, and buyer engagement to surface deal risks, missing stakeholders, and recommended next actions. The company also announced Library Agent, expanded Seismic Everywhere with MCP-powered workflows and new ecosystem integrations, and previewed Seismic Context Graph, an intelligence layer designed to connect GTM activity with business outcomes. These advances reflect Seismic's approach to revenue execution: connecting governed content, customer and seller context, AI-driven guidance, and workflows so teams can turn intelligence into winning action wherever they work. The combined company serves 2,500 organizations and more than 3.5 million users globally, with plans to invest more than $100 million annually in research and development. Seismic continues to invest in both platforms while advancing a shared vision for AI-powered GTM performance. Forrester disclaimer. Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such research publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester's objectivity here. About seismic. Seismic is the Go-To-Market Performance company, driving how organizations turn their strategy into revenue. Seismic brings together signals from customer conversations, buyer engagement, governed content, coaching and seller behavior to turn intelligence into winning action. Through its AI revenue execution platform, the company equips customer-facing teams with the insights, governance, and contextual guidance they need to execute with confidence and deliver measurable business outcomes.Trusted by 2,500 organizations and over 3.5 million users around the globe, Seismic is headquartered in San Diego with offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Learn more at seismic.com.