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Microsoft's AI run rate doubled to $37B overnight, McKinsey put AI agents in charge of staffing its own client teams, and AI power demand flipped Caterpillar's last Wall Street bear. Buying the tools is the easy part. Leaders pull away because they pay down workflow debt before they automate, and underwrite every pilot with unit economics.
In today's lineup:
Robots
Growth not productivity separates AI leaders now
Real ROI from Gen AI
Vertical CX agents vs horizontal agent platforms
People
Lilian Schwich closes the loop on Europe's battery supply
Love
How AI leaders escape the pilot purgatory trap
High Output Management by Andy Grove
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
Microsoft's AI run rate hits $37B, turning the PwC leader-laggard gap into a P&L line.
McKinsey hands client-team selection to AI agents, putting agentic ops at the heart of the consulting playbook.
Caterpillar's last bear capitulates on AI power demand, naming AI infrastructure a multi-sector P&L tailwind.
Forrester names CIOs the new agent governors, recasting the Strategy Vacuum as a role mandate.
Nebius buys Eigen AI for $643M, consolidating the inference layer where AI unit cost compounds.
Growth not productivity separates AI leaders now
A new PwC study of 1,217 senior executives across 25 sectors shows just 20% of companies are now capturing 74% of AI's economic value, and the gap is widening fast. Leaders pull away because they point AI at growth and business reinvention, not at cost reduction alone. They report productivity gains of 25–40% inside augmented workflows. The median company sees 3–7%, still trapped in pilot purgatory.
What leaders must do
Build the 90-day roadmap before any tool selection so an internal sponsor owns the execution architecture
Pay down workflow debt and remediate data inputs before scaling AI across any broken process
Underwrite every pilot with unit economics so the CFO sees capital efficiency before the second budget cycle
Anchor each initiative to industry convergence, the single strongest predictor of AI financial returns
Which side of the 7x AI gap are you on?
Real ROI from Gen AI
How human-centric AI delivers business results
Restb ai standardised fragmented MLS listing data across 26 new partner systems, reaching 1 million+ real estate agents across North America with image-recognition workflows.
CIMB Niaga rebuilt its banking workflows on Google Cloud and Artefact's life-centric AI agents, shifting millions of retail clients to context-aware banking across Indonesia.
Cleveland Clinic scaled ambient AI across 80+ specialties to absorb clinical documentation, with 80% of physicians reporting reduced charting time and more direct patient face-time.
Tool Spotlight
Vertical CX agents vs horizontal agent platforms
Recently unveiled at Adobe Summit to orchestrate customer-lifecycle agents with Brand Intelligence and an MCP-compatible Coworker layer.
Best for: Marketing and CX leaders consolidating fragmented prospect, engagement, and loyalty workflows.
Choose if you…
Need brand-consistent agents that reason against your existing creative stack.
Want MCP endpoints to plug agents into AWS, Google Cloud, or Anthropic.
Prefer a CX-native platform over retrofitting horizontal agent tools.
Best for: Technology and innovation leaders running hundreds of agents from different vendors.
Choose if you…
Need a single runtime and observability layer across departments.
Want low-code Agent Studio plus a kit for multi-agent orchestration.
Prefer an open partner marketplace over building every connector in-house.
3 other tools to explore
ServiceNow AI Orchestrator, LangGraph, and Tray.io are strong alternatives for ITSM-rooted digital workers, open-source multi-agent orchestration, or an iPaaS spine connecting best-of-breed components.
PEOPLE 👥
Meet the innovators turning bold ideas into real-world impact.
Transformation Champion
Lilian Schwich closes the loop on Europe's battery supply
Europe's EV transition produces vast volumes of spent batteries with no clean recycling path. Cylib CEO Dr. Lilian Schwich built a water-based process to recover lithium, cobalt, and nickel at industrial scale. The Aachen team recently joined the SIB:DE sodium-ion recycling consortium after securing a €63.4M EU grant, closing the loop on critical minerals rather than chasing the next battery.
LOVE ❤️
Practical wisdom, growth tactics, and a must-read book that will challenge the way you think.
How AI leaders escape the pilot purgatory trap
Well-funded initiatives often stall out because the systems built to protect your core business naturally suffocate radical ideas before they reach a prototype.
Vision drift trips most AI strategies, with failure rates climbing above 70%. The fix: stay stubborn on vision, flexible on execution.
Three moves:
Lock the outcome metric for the next twelve months and refuse to relitigate it.
Treat every quarter's plan as a draft, not a contract.
Reassign budget weekly toward whichever pilot is closest to that fixed metric.
Build the operating system for the next decade in my book, 100x.
👉🏽 Reply to this email with "100x" for a free copy.
Transformative Reads
One book, handpicked from my conversations with friends, industry leaders, and tech innovators:
High Output Management by Andy Grove turns a CEO's calendar into output. Grove defines management as leverage and shows how meeting cadence, one-on-ones, and indicators replace gut-feel decisions when scale outpaces intuition.
Perfect for: CEOs and operating leaders rebuilding decision velocity for the agentic era.
In Culture
The pilot grew up in a greenhouse. The rollout has to survive the weather.
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Much Love,
Matt and the Future Works team
