#ai-strategy

#ai-strategy

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.

"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.

The way most marketing teams approach AI is probably the way I approach my inbox at 4:59 PM on a Friday. With reckless optimism and zero follow-through. But Katie Miserany, SurveyMonkey's Chief Communication Officer and SVP of Marketing, thinks the real problem isn't AI - it's that most marketers have forgotten a fundamental truth: Just because you can talk about something doesn't mean you should.

YouTube has grown tremendously over the years and has become a popular place to earn a living for many talented creators, while others use it for entertainment. They complemented each other and helped YouTube grow the way it did since its inception. In addition to this mutually beneficial relationship, Google's algorithm deserves credit for YouTube's meteoric rise to become one of the best streaming platforms.

While consulting for a national DIY automotive store chain, we discovered a common pattern. Auto enthusiasts (gearheads) who could evaluate spare part technologies and verify quality on their own did not care which store they patronized, as long as the products they needed were always available. On the other hand, relative amateurs and novices who lacked sufficient technical knowledge developed loyalty to retail stores where they felt they received trustworthy guidance to help select the right products for their needs.

Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft's chief marketing officer, and his marketing team will join the newly created organization, with Takeshi reporting directly to Althoff as CMO; Numoto will still also report directly to Nadella on all-up business models, planning, consumer marketing, and corporate brand and communications.

"Humanity is investing enormous resources in the race to advance Artificial Intelligence," said Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison. "Clay's years of experience leading Oracle's large, fast-growing Cloud Infrastructure business has demonstrated his readiness for a CEO role." "Mike has spent the last several years modernizing Oracle's Industry applications businesses - including Oracle Health - by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies."

AI has become the boardroom obsession of the decade. Yet despite billions in investment and relentless hype, recent independent studies show that most enterprises struggle to turn pilots into measurable business outcomes. Two recent studies put this problem into sharp focus: These studies deliver an important message that must echo across boardrooms: AI pilots aren't failing because the technology isn't powerful enough. They're failing because the strategy and expectations behind them are flawed.

"Every company can securely turn its enterprise data into AI apps and agents to grow revenue faster, operate more efficiently, and make smarter decisions with less risk," Ghodsi said.

Meta plans to restructure its AI division into four subdivisions to enhance its generative AI strategy, including an infrastructure team, product team, FAIR lab, and a TBDlab.