C3.ai (NYSE: AI) is a publicly traded enterprise AI platform founded by Thomas Siebel. Learn what it does, who it serves, and how pricing works.
The name 'C3' is genuinely ambiguous across the software world, so it is worth stating plainly: this profile is about C3.ai, the enterprise AI software company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AI. It was founded in 2009 by Thomas Siebel, previously the founder of CRM pioneer Siebel Systems, and has no relationship to unrelated companies or products that also happen to use a name containing 'C3.'
The company's own name has changed as its focus evolved: it began with a narrower emphasis on carbon and energy management (operating for a period as C3 Energy, and later as C3IoT as it broadened into industrial IoT applications), before settling on C3.ai once artificial intelligence and machine learning became the clear center of its product strategy and public identity.
C3.ai's central product is a model-driven, low-code development environment - marketed today as the C3 Agentic AI Platform alongside tools like C3 AI Studio and C3 Code - built to let large enterprises design, deploy, and operate AI and machine learning applications across sprawling, heterogeneous data environments that are typical of big industrial and government organizations.
On top of that platform, C3.ai sells a portfolio of prebuilt, industry-specific applications addressing high-value problems such as predictive maintenance (branded as Reliability), demand planning, process optimization, inventory optimization, and supply-chain sourcing, letting customers get to value faster than building every application from scratch on the raw platform.
C3.ai's customer base is concentrated among large enterprises and government/defense agencies rather than small businesses or individual developers; publicly known relationships include the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, and major industrial players such as Shell and Baker Hughes in the energy sector.
Because of this enterprise- and government-heavy customer base, C3.ai does not publish self-serve pricing plans; instead, it sells through a traditional enterprise sales process with contract terms negotiated per deal. As a public company, however, it does disclose aggregate financial performance in its regulatory filings, offering a degree of transparency into growth and profitability that is unusual for enterprise AI vendors, most of which remain privately held.
In this context, yes - 'C3' refers to C3.ai, the publicly traded enterprise AI software company (NYSE: AI). The name has been shared by other unrelated products over the years, but this profile specifically covers C3.ai.
C3.ai was founded in 2009 by Thomas Siebel, who previously founded the CRM company Siebel Systems.
C3.ai held its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on December 9, 2020, under the ticker symbol AI.
C3.ai provides a platform for building, deploying, and operating enterprise AI and machine learning applications, along with prebuilt applications for use cases like predictive maintenance, demand planning, and process optimization.
C3.ai does not publish fixed pricing plans. It sells through direct enterprise sales with pricing negotiated per contract based on deployment scope and scale.
C3.ai's customers are concentrated in energy, manufacturing, defense/government, and other large industrial sectors, including publicly known relationships with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, Shell, and Baker Hughes.
The company operated under earlier names including C3 Energy and C3IoT before rebranding to C3.ai as its focus shifted fully toward artificial intelligence.
No. C3.ai is a distinct, publicly traded enterprise AI software company founded by Thomas Siebel in 2009; any other unrelated product or service that happens to share the name 'C3' is a separate entity.