95% AI Adoption: How Zoetis Built a Model-Agnostic Platform That Stuck

Keith Sarbaugh (0:00)

We're using it to automate study reports on the back end. We're cutting the time of that process in like half with AI in some cases. That saves months and months per submission. That's a big deal. It allows us to get innovative treatment to the market faster.

Peter High (0:15)

Welcome to Technovation. I'm Peter High, president of Metis Strategy. My guest today is Keith Sarbaugh. Keith is the executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer of Zoetis, the world's leading animal health company with approximately 14,000 employees and $9.5 billion in 2025 revenue. The company develops medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, biopharmaceuticals, and digital solutions that help veterinarians, livestock producers, and pet owners.

Keith joined Zoetis as chief information officer in 2023, and his role has since expanded to encompass IT, digital, artificial intelligence, data, cybersecurity, and global customer experience. He and his team enable business outcomes and improve the experiences of veterinary professionals, livestock producers, and animal owners. Prior to joining Zoetis, Keith was an executive at Biogen and spent nearly 20 years at Eli Lilly. In this conversation, Keith and I will discuss how direct exposure to veterinary practices informs Zoetis' technology investments, how AI is changing drug discovery, and how the company achieved broad adoption of its model agnostic generative AI platform. We'll also explore Zoetis' framework for measuring the value of technology investments, its approach to agentic AI, and the importance of change management as AI becomes part of everyday work.

Keith, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today.

Keith Sarbaugh (1:29)

Peter, I'm happy to be here.

I feel like I finally made the tier that makes it to the podcast. It's quoted top. Thank you for the invitation.

Peter High (1:38)

Today's episode is brought to you by Tines 3B. Organizations are pushing teams to move faster with AI. That's creating a wave of AI-generated code and unsanctioned automations leading to rising costs, security risks, and huge IT burdens. Meet Tines 3B, a single, secure environment that enables employees to build with AI while giving IT and security complete control to run and govern that work. 3B enables effortless building. Describe what you need in plain English, and 3B builds a fully functioning workflow. It uses IT authorized connectors, meaning credentials, state protected, and non-technical teams can innovate without taking on unseen risk. Also, with full visibility across every workflow, IT gets total governance, while features like Auto-Tune and Auto-Fix ensure workflows improve and self-heal continuously over time. Employees get the freedom to build, while IT gets the control to govern. No shadow AI, no data leaks, Tines 3B moves IT and security from blockers to enablers, giving teams the speed to innovate without compromising control. Visit the Tines website at tines.com, that's tines.com, to learn more and try 3B for yourself. And now on to the interview.

That's not the way I look at it. You certainly have been there for some time, but I'm glad we are finally getting on the record together, having known each other for quite some time as well, Keith.

Well, one of the things I know about you is that you're a leader, an executive within Zoetis. And for some who are listening or watching, they may be less familiar with Zoetis. And I thought maybe you could take a moment here at the outset to describe the business that you help lead.

Keith Sarbaugh (3:09)

Yeah, thanks. So Zoetis, we're the world's leading animal health company. We're a Fortune 500 company. We have about nine and a half billion in revenue, about 14,000 colleagues, and we operate in over 100 countries around the world. Our purpose is pretty simple. It's to nurture our world and humankind through the care of animals. In the businesses we're in, we predict, prevent, detect and treat illness across all sorts of animals. We sort of look at our business in two pieces. There's a piece around companion animals, so cats and dogs and the pets we all know of but also feed animals for growing protein demands around the world. So it's an important remit. We care deeply about the care of animals and have been in this business for some time.

We have 12 potential blockbusters in our pipeline and blockbusters. We're looking at big deal of animal health products sitting in the next several years. Zoetis has a long history of innovation. So it's not a lot of me too, but a lot of new establishing new TA therapeutic areas and sort of new treatments to really change the course of animal health.

Peter High (4:18)

Fascinating. You joined the company in 2023 as the Chief Information Officer. A couple of years ago, you became the Chief Digital and Technology Officer. Talk a bit about your purview, if you would.