Key Points

His remarks align with growing apprehensions about AI replacing millions of jobs soon.

"I have often said this to our employees: the fact that software engineers get paid better than mechanical engineers or civil engineers or chemists or school teachers is not some birthright and we cannot take that for granted, and we cannot assume it will last forever," Vembu said in a post on X social media platform.

"The fact that customers pay for our products also cannot be taken for granted. This is to remind ourselves that we can be 'disrupted' -- and the more we assume we won't be, the more likely we will be. Or as Andy Grove of Intel said 'Only the paranoid survive,'" he mentioned.

Last month, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that up to 40 per cent of global jobs could be affected by AI.

According to Vembu, "the productivity revolution I see coming to software development (LLMs + tooling) could destroy a lot of software jobs. This is sobering but necessary to internalise".

Earlier this month, Zoho put its ambitious $700 million semiconductor chip manufacturing project on hold, and the company's Co-founder Sridhar Vembu said they were not confident enough in the current technology path to proceed.

Vembu explained that since chip fabrication is a highly capital-intensive business, it needs strong government support.

"On our semiconductor fab investment plan, since this business is so capital intensive, it requires government backing, we wanted to be absolutely sure of the technology path before we take taxpayer money," Vembu wrote on X social media platform.

He added that they did not have that confidence in the tech so the board decided to shelve this idea for the time being, "until we find a better tech approach".

- IANS