This role is all about thinking how you can use your experience and keep yourself up to pace with the advancement that is happening in the technology world. As CIO, you must ensure you understand market insights, so that you know what's happening in the business, what's happening in the industry, and then continue to push your stakeholders on future-proofing your organisation.
The bank is reshuffling its commercial and investment bank to "maximize the impact of AI," according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider that was sent this week. The firm has named Guy Halamish as the chief operating officer of the CIB and tasked him with overseeing the ongoing effort to "harness the power of our data and fully leverage rapidly evolving AI capabilities," the memo, signed by the CIB's co-CEOs, Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, said.
AI is no longer optional at banks. The road map, and showing how it pays off, is the hard part. Alexandra Mousavizadeh, the cofounder and co-CEO of Evident, which tracks AI use in the financial industry, said some AI capabilities are "table stakes" for banks at this point - think back-office functions like reviewing legal documents and routine onboarding tasks. Beyond that, though, Mousavizadeh banks need to double down on their "competitive edge."
Revenue was $81.3 billion and increased 17% (up 15% in constant currency) Operating income was $38.3 billion and increased 21% (up 19% in constant currency) Net income on a GAAP basis was $38.5 billion and increased 60%, and on a non-GAAP basis was $30.9 billion and increased 23% (up 21% in constant currency) Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $5.16 and increased 60%, and on a non-GAAP basis was $4.14 and increased 24% (up 21% in constant currency) Non-GAAP results exclude the impact from investments in OpenAI, explained in the Non-GAAP Definition section below
Eric Schmidt has been a central figure at Google for nearly two decades, serving as CEO and executive chairman of the company and of Alphabet, the conglomerate of which Google is a part, between 2001 and 2017. An active supporter of the Democratic Party, he maintained a close relationship with Barack Obama from the beginning. He is currently, among other things, CEO and investor in Relativity Space, an aerospace company.
The foundation of an AI strategy is about vision, drivers and risks. It should focus on the essence of what an organization wants to achieve with AI, and be fully aligned with its business strategy. Digital workplace leaders should have regular discussions with relevant stakeholders, including C-level managers. Together, they should identify and formulate a vision that answers the question about the importance of AI to the organization, given its business goals, current market circumstances and competitor activities.
A quiet but consequential shift is underway in the executive labor market. Companies are rethinking how they access senior judgment in the AI era. Rather than defaulting to full-time executive roles that command lofty salaries and long-term overhead, companies are increasingly turning to experienced consultants, strategists, and advisors to provide leadership on a limited and targeted basis. This is not a dilution of leadership, but a recalibration of where experience delivers the most value.
If you want to win in AI - and I mean win in the biggest, most lucrative, most shape-the-world-in-your-image kind of way - you have to do a bunch of hard things simultaneously. You need to have a model that is unquestionably one of the best on the market. You need the nearly infinite resources required to continue to improve that mode and deploy it at massive scale.
AI is coming for unprepared businesses. The tools that seemed futuristic last year are now mainstream. Your customers can access the same information, generate the same content, build the same websites. What if your business became obsolete because you didn't see what was right in front of you? The businesses that thrive in 2026 will be the ones that take action today. They'll build trust through human connection and prove their value beyond what any tool can replicate.
Sam Altman reportedly issued an internal "code red" at OpenAI in December 2025 - an emergency directive to focus resources on improving ChatGPT whilst delaying initiatives like advertising or Pulse triggered by Google's launch of Gemini 3. The flagship product that triggered the current AI frenzy, deployed to hundreds of millions of users, needed an internal alarm bell. Not because it had fundamentally failed.
The announcement made headlines and thrilled investors, but behind the scenes, the organization wasn't prepared. Ted was given a skeletal team of two direct reports, a patchwork of third-party tools, and the mandate to partner with five global banking divisions serving more than 500 employees. He was expected to turn the AI vision into reality with little structural support.
"We want AI to penetrate all aspects of our business," he told ZDNET in a one-to-one conversation at a hotel in London, suggesting his company has created a top-down and bottom-up commitment, where employees are encouraged to explore AI in a tightly governed and secure manner. Also: 5 ways to prevent your AI strategy from going bust Key use cases include conversation summarization to assist support specialists, applying agentic AI to enterprise-grade software engineering, and using gen AI to create effective marketing collateral.
The mission is both personal and professional for the Nadella, who is pushing the company to rethink how it operates at every level. That's according to internal Microsoft documents obtained by Business Insider, and interviews with leaders, managers, and other employees at the software giant. Sweeping organizational shifts include high-profile executive changes and mandates for teams to work faster and leaner - all designed to consolidate power around AI leaders and radically reshape how the company builds and funds its products.
Leaders need to make themselves vulnerable when it comes to AI. As Rajan observed, there is power in saying I don't know. Of admitting that I don't know what the future will hold or what the best AI use cases will be. That's a hard pill for most lawyers to swallow and for managing partners of a firm full of aggressive lawyers to admit.
"For too long, our Department has been bogged down by bureaucracy and busy-work; even the most productive public servants are mired in paperwork and process. Across our mission space - from research, to health care delivery, to public health - we've layered administrative red tape on innovators," HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill wrote in an introductory letter for the strategy. "We will harness AI technologies to streamline operations and enhance support for care delivery throughout the entire health care industry. We call it OneHHS."
"We will neither fail, nor will we be an average outcome, and that's what we want and that's all I care about every day and all you should care about every day, and nothing else should matter," CEO Alex Blania told employees at the start of the year, according to a recording reviewed by BI's Nicole Einbinder. Blania's message has become a common pitch from tech executives to their employees ahead of critical junctures. For Orb, it's about getting more people to opt into what amounts to a human verification tool.
SoftBank Group has liquidated its complete stake in Nvidia for $5.8 billion, the company announced during a presentation for investors early Tuesday morning, instead redirecting capital toward OpenAI as part of a strategic pivot that underscores both the company's bullish conviction on AI and CEO Masayoshi Son's willingness to place massive, high-stakes bets on emerging tech. Nvidia stock fell 2% shortly after the opening bell.
Many organizations are racing to build AI strategies, but too often they focus on adopting the latest tech, rather than creating the environment to support it. The reality is that lasting transformation is fueled by people, which requires companies to take a good look at their culture. At Architech, that's exactly what we did. By prioritizing and rewarding innovation, we aligned our culture with our AI strategy-and it worked.
Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, wrote in a note to staff that the move would make the company "even stronger" by shifting resources "to ensure we're investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers' current and future needs". She acknowledged that some would question the move given the company was performing well. At the end of July, Amazon reported second quarter results which beat Wall Street expectations on several counts, including a 13% year over year increase in sales to $167.7bn (125bn).
On Tuesday's "TPBN" podcast, the show hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays spoke with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella after the announcement, noting that he is now a "peacetime CEO," as the dispute with OpenAI has been resolved. "I think AI and everything that it entails is going to be a core driver, and some of it'll come from just this intelligence and this sort of continual march of capability," Nadella said in response to the hosts' question on what he expects from the OpenAI agreement.
Krafton, the company behind games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds and the Sims-like InZOI, is making a big push into using AI within the company. Under this new "AI First" strategy, Krafton plans to use agentic AI to help automate work and implement an "AI-cenetered" management system, according to a translation of a press release. The company also plans to spend more than 100 billion Korean won, a figure that equates to nearly $70 million, to build a GPU cluster.
The role of the CFO has been evolving for years, but it's happening more rapidly today than ever before, said Gina Mastantuono, president and CFO of ServiceNow, during a chief financial officer panel at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. "It's now a combination of strategic vision, disciplined execution, and enterprise-wide leadership," she said. "Finance and strategy are now inseparable."
Agentic AI is not just another iteration of automation or generative AI. Agentic AI systems can autonomously manage complex tasks, optimize processes, and proactively identify opportunities or risks, reducing the need for constant human oversight. This autonomy allows businesses to respond more quickly to changing market conditions, improve decision-making, and allocate human resources to higher-value activities.
To avoid a chaotic, ad hoc and, above all, risky AI implementation, all of your people need to be onboarded to your AI strategy and vetted collection of AI tools. It's also great for your people: Research shows that folks who understand AI are more likely to engage with AI tools and less likely to view AI with fear or mistrust. And given the 82% of leaders planning to expand the capacity of their workforce with digital labor, there's no time like the present.
