In today's lineup: 

Robots

• The smart AI play for the next decade

• Real ROI from Gen AI

• The executive's guide to the new AI browser battle

People

• Hartmut Neven's vision for the quantum advantage 

Love

• From AI vision to roadmap in four weeks

• Transformative Reads: Blue Ocean Strategy

Reading time: 3 min. 

Top Insights

• The AI economy is creating a winner-take-all market

• Elite computing power is now the price of entry for AI

• OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a core enterprise platform

• AI investing is shifting from hype to risk management

• OpenAI signals a push to embed AI into the operating system

The smart AI play for the next decade

A reality check from OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy states functional AI agents are "about a decade" away. This expert view reframes the staggering 95% failure rate for enterprise AI pilots. The statistic signals a deeper trend: the industry is "overshooting the tooling." The key insight for leaders frames this high failure rate not as a bug, but as a feature of a necessary, messy experimentation phase.

While our last discussion highlighted the "GenAI Divide," the new imperative requires leading through it with a clear-eyed strategy that separates hype from reality.

How to build real advantage beyond the hype

• Reframe pilot failures as R&D, prioritizing institutional learning over immediate, scalable deployment.

• Prioritize augmentation over autonomy to enhance human teams and deliver immediate efficiency gains.

• Promote agility by empowering smaller, high-impact teams, mirroring Meta's move to cut bureaucracy and accelerate breakthroughs.

• Build cross-functional teams that pair technical experts with business users to find practical, real-world solutions.

• Prioritize proprietary data to avoid the "AI brain rot" from public models.

Real ROI from Gen AI

How human-centric AI delivers business results 

• Klarna uses an AI assistant to handle customer service chats, cutting resolution times from 11 minutes to 2 and driving a projected $40M in profit.

• Morgan Stanley uses an AI platform to give advisors instant insights, cutting client follow-up times from days to hours.

• BBVA empowers employees to build their own AI tools, launching 2,900+ custom apps in five months to cut project timelines from weeks to hours.

A newsletter we love: Dense Discovery

In a world of algorithmic noise, we're always searching for genuinely curated content. With over 350 issues, Dense Discovery it's a trusted source for thoughtful discoveries in tech, design, art, and culture. If you appreciate the content we share in Lighthouse, we think you'll love this too.

Join tens of thousands of readers for free and get one beautifully designed weekly email packed with fresh discoveries!

Tool Spotlight

Your weekly briefing on tools that create competitive leverage

The executive's guide to the new AI browser battle

The AI browser war has officially exploded. More than a simple feature race, this has become a strategic choice between a browser that serves the web or one that serves an AI.

OpenAI Atlas

Best for: Making ChatGPT the central hub for all web activity. Choose if you:

• Need to automate multi-step research and data workflows.

• Value a native ChatGPT integration for advanced AI tasks.

• Are building new, AI-first processes from the ground up.

Google Chrome with Gemini 

Best for: Teams in the Google Workspace ecosystem needing reliable AI enhancements. Choose if you:

• Need seamless integration with Google Docs, Sheets, and Drive.

• Prioritize stability and a massive extension library.

• Want to enhance, not replace, existing workflows.

Microsoft Edge with Copilot 

Best for: Enterprise teams in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem needing secure, integrated AI. Choose if you:

• Need AI that accesses both web and internal company data (Teams, Outlook).

• Prioritize enterprise-grade security and compliance.

• Want AI embedded directly within your Microsoft apps.

Alternative browsers for a competitive edge:

• Arc: A workspace-first UI for organizing complex projects.

• Brave: Best-in-class privacy and ad-blocking for a cleaner, more secure web.

• SigmaOS: A browser reimagined as an OS for multitasking and deep work.

Transformation Champion

Hartmut Neven's vision for the quantum advantage

The Google Quantum AI lead argues that while today's focus is on AI, the next true competitive advantage will come from quantum. His team's recent breakthrough with the "Quantum Echoes" algorithm dramatically outperforms classical supercomputers, offering a "quantum-scope" to accelerate R&D in drug discovery and materials science. While skeptics note the gap between this milestone and a market-ready solution, his work provides a crucial mental model for leaders to plan for foundational technological shifts long before they become mainstream.

Neven says, "Just as the telescope and the microscope opened up new, unseen worlds, this experiment is a step toward a ‘quantum-scope’ capable of measuring previously unobservable natural phenomena" (The Keyword).

From AI vision to roadmap in four weeks

While 95% of GenAI projects fail to deliver returns, we helped JLL cross that divide. In just four weeks, we delivered their complete AI strategy, working prototypes, and an 18-month execution roadmap.

As Andy Poppink, CEO of Global Markets Advisory at JLL, put it, our team "delivered with excellence" on a challenging project in an "unreasonably short timeframe."

this is what delivering 2x faster looks like. See the full story and more proof in our new online hub.

Transformative Reads

One book, handpicked from my conversations with friends, industry leaders, and tech innovators:

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argues that enduring success comes not from battling competitors in bloody "red oceans," but from creating uncontested market space. This strategic playbook provides a powerful framework for making the competition irrelevant by simultaneously pursuing differentiation and low cost, creating a leap in value for your customers.

Perfect for: Strategists, innovators, and executives seeking to redefine their industries and create new opportunities for growth.

In Culture

Here's something to laugh about this week.

THANK YOU!

Lighthouse takes us many hours to create, and we don’t run ads or charge anything. We are dedicated to making it the best AI transformation newsletter possible.

We just ask for one thing: tell one friend about Lighthouse today!