Dropbox’s CTO wants every employee at the cloud-storage company to use AI. He’s letting them find their own ways to use it

Quick note: Fortune Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 7-8 to convene technologists, entrepreneurs, Fortune Global 500 executives, investors, policymakers, and the brilliant minds in between to interrogate the most pressing questions about AI. We will explore how organizations are deploying and scaling AI in their industries. Register now When Ali Dasdan left software and data platform ZoomInfo, his plan was to create his own agentic AI startup. But before he got started, Dasdan was convinced by Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to instead join the cloud storage company. In March 2025, Dasdan was officially named CTO of Dropbox, the fifth time that he’s held that title over the past 15 years. He says he came to Dropbox to focus on the acceleration of generative AI within Dropbox’s external-facing products; to greatly increase the usage of AI tools for the engineering, product, and design teams; and to make AI more accessible for the company’s total workforce of 2,113. Less than 40% of Dropbox’s engineering, product, and design teams were using AI tools when Dasdan joined the company. He was able to get full adoption across this entire population by doubling down on training, AI-focused hackathon events, championing AI superusers, and…