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This week, AI infrastructure spending kept accelerating: a16z put $1.1B behind the physical buildout, and Nvidia is reportedly circling Hugging Face for $12.9B. Yet McKinsey's latest survey of 1,719 leaders tells a different story: 80% feel more productive, only 6% see it show up in EBIT. Capital is outrunning returns. This issue is about what that 6% does differently.
"People have had a mess in the enterprise for six decades: legacy systems, lack of integration."
— Bill McDermott, Chairman and CEO, ServiceNow
In today's lineup
Robots
Set the metric before you scale the agent
Real ROI from Gen AI
An identity control plane before the next audit
People
Sunny Gupta bets the back office is the real AI opportunity
Love
Most AI bets are reversible. Decide like it.
Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
Reading time: 3 min.
ROBOTS 🤖
How are robotics and AI changing industries? We break down the latest news, tools, and innovations for you.
Top Insights
Andreessen Horowitz bets $1.1B on AI's physical buildout, betting infrastructure beats software next.
Nvidia is reportedly in talks to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9B, tightening its grip on open-source AI.
A federal judge rules the Pentagon's AI-vendor blacklist unlawful, a new compliance signal for AI vendors.
Fed Chair Warsh won't commit to a rate path at Jackson Hole, leaving capital costs uncertain.
Iran urges allies to defy new U.S. sanctions, reopening Hormuz disruption risk.
Set the metric before you scale the agent
McKinsey surveyed 1,719 leaders for The State of AI in 2026: On the Road to ROI. 80% say AI made them more productive. Only 37% of organizations see any EBIT impact, flat versus last year, and just 6% call that impact significant.
Among $1B+ firms, 40% now scale AI agents enterprise-wide, up from 27% a year ago. Real movement, still a minority.
What the 6% do differently:
Redesign the workflow before scaling the agent
Attach a metric before it ships
Fund the next cycle on the metric that moved, not the tool that shipped
Productivity and EBIT are not the same metric. The 6% treat them that way.
What's stopping your team from redesigning before you scale AI?
Real ROI from Gen AI
How human-centric AI delivers business results
Acme Space cut its Hyperion vehicle design cycle from six months to 10 minutes with a three-agent system that designs, simulates, and checks its own work before an engineer signs off.
Rockwell Automation connected Plex QMS to FactoryTalk Analytics VisionAI this month, catching defects manual inspection, about 80% effective alone, misses. Its Connected Worker agent now turns CAD files straight into work instructions.
Mercy cut nursing end-of-shift documentation time 85%, from 3.5 minutes to 32 seconds per note, using Epic's AI assistant. Notes completed on time rose 225%.
Tool Spotlight
Your weekly briefing on tools that create competitive leverage
An identity control plane before the next audit
Built by Shai Morag, who sold Ermetic to Tenable for $265M. Maps identity access to real usage and strips unneeded permissions in real time, not on a quarterly review. $60M seed, already live with enterprise clients. Best for CISOs who need to know which agents can touch what before an auditor asks.
Discovers and governs enterprise AI agents across SaaS, cloud, and endpoints from one platform. $100M raised. Best for CIOs who want governance in place before agent sprawl becomes the excuse for another point solution.
3 other tools to explore
Hush Security suits enterprises swapping standing agent credentials for scoped, just-in-time access.
Trase suits regulated industries, healthcare and defense especially, that need audit trails built into agent orchestration, not bolted on after.
Thira suits IT teams that want agents closing tickets across ServiceNow and Jira, not just recommending fixes.
PEOPLE 👥
Meet the innovators turning bold ideas into real-world impact.
Transformation Champion
Sunny Gupta bets the back office is the real AI opportunity
Gupta co-founded Apptio, sold to Vista Equity for $4.6B in 2019 (IBM bought it from Vista in 2023). Now he's building Thira with fellow Apptio co-founder Kurt Shintaffer: agents that close IT tickets across ServiceNow, Jira, Freshservice, and identity tools, not just flag them. Thira raised a $21M seed round led by Madrona. Ten design partners running it ahead of a fall launch.
LOVE ❤️
Practical wisdom, growth tactics, and a must-read book that will challenge the way you think.
Most AI bets are reversible. Decide like it.
Bezos split every decision into two types back in '97: the ones you can't undo, and the ones where the door stays open behind you.
Most execs treat every AI pilot like the first kind: a committee, a quarter of sign-offs, a wait for certainty that never shows up. Almost none of them are. A new agent in one workflow, a new vendor, a two-week test: reversible, cheap, fast to be wrong about.
Sort the decision before the meeting starts.
Give the reversible ones a week, not a quarter.
Save the committee for the few that actually can't be undone.
It's the same reason our own pilots run in two weeks, not six months.
Transformative Reads
One book, handpicked from my conversations with friends, industry leaders, and tech innovators:
In Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath lay out WRAP: widen your options, reality-test them, attain distance before you choose, prepare to be wrong. Most AI committees do the opposite: one option, no test, no distance, full certainty. Run the reversible calls through WRAP in a week. Save the long version for the ones you can't undo.
In Culture
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Much Love,
Matt and the Future Works team
