What I learned about Autodesk in 2025, from my 'cosy' chat with its CEO

The Autodesk University 2025 keynote from CEO Andrew Anagnost is done and dusted, but that doesn't mean he's letting up. Behind the scenes in Nashville, a group of us is invited to a cosy chat to pick the brain of the man charged with reinventing Autodesk.

I expected a typical tech presser: slick slides, ambitious promises, and a dash of corporate spectacle. What I got instead was a surprisingly candid conversation with Autodesk's CEO, one that painted a much more deliberate and human-centric picture of Autodesk’s direction, particularly as it navigates the AI-driven future of design.

The headline news is Forma. Autodesk isn’t just tweaking its construction software anymore; it’s aiming for a fully unified end-to-end environment. Conceptual design, detailed engineering, MEP planning, and construction management are all coming together under one roof, powered by a single data layer. For users, that means no more juggling separate platforms or hoping different teams’ data will align. For Autodesk, it’s a foundation for automation that goes beyond anything Fusion has offered to date. “It’s a big deal,” Anagnost says. “It brings together the work that’s been going on for a while, in one place, and allows us to start automating things at a significant level.”

So of course, AI

AI was the other dominant theme. Autodesk is rebuilding its intellectual property into foundation models designed specifically for industrial use. These aren’t generic AI assistants like the ones popping up in your email or banking apps; they’re context-aware, discipline-specific agents that help humans make decisions rather than replacing them. Anagnost was adamant: humans stay in the loop. “We’re not trying to create the answer,” he says. “The goal is to make it easy for engineers, architects, and construction professionals to evaluate options and make the call themselves.”

This industrial AI extends across Autodesk’s tools, whether it’s generative design, simulation, or even something as complex as real-time construction data management. One striking example he shared involved concurrent updates in construction data: an AI agent could automatically adjust concrete pricing across a live model, ensuring teams are working with accurate information in real time. It’s the kind of integration that could finally break the waterfall-style workflows that have long defined architecture and construction.

Accessibility was another clear priority. Autodesk isn’t just lowering complexity for seasoned users; it’s opening doors for new entrants. Tools like Flow Studio and the next generation of Maya (read our list of the best 3D modelling software) are being designed so that small firms can achieve outputs once reserved for the largest studios, and large firms can push into more ambitious work. The bar to entry is dropping without compromising the sophistication of the results.

A frictionless future

On the business side, licensing and consumption models are evolving too. Traditional subscriptions remain, but expect more flexible, usage-based models, especially as AI-driven tasks increasingly consume compute on demand. And while energy usage for AI is always a headline, Anagnost pushed back against the doom-and-gloom narrative: sustainable data centers, optimization, and edge computing are all part of Autodesk’s plan to keep this expansion responsible.

Finally, the chat revealed a company still very much committed to replacing itself with the next generation of technology rather than resting on its laurels. Machine learning and optimisation might dominate today, but Anagnost sees generative AI as the defining force of the next era. Autodesk isn’t just preparing for that future; it’s building it, and it’s taking its users along for the ride.

Now, you may be reading this, shrugging, and muttering internally, 'Why does this interest me? I don't use Archviz apps. I'm a designer, artist, animator…' Well, if there’s one takeaway from our chat, which lasted more than 60 minutes, it’s this: Autodesk in 2025 is less about software as a tool and more about software as a collaborative, intelligent partner.

The company isn’t chasing AI for the sake of headlines and grabbing onto a buzzy trend; it’s deliberately engineering a future where creativity, productivity, and professional judgment coexist, and where the next generation of designers and engineers, and yes, artists and animators, all creatives, can step in with less friction than ever before.

For more, read my insights into Autodesk's new AI tools for filmmaking and animation.