#3 Why your AI strategy is probably failing (and how to fix it)

Also, the secret weapon behind OpenAI's 75% market dominance, Amazon's workforce is now 50% robots!

AuthorAuthor

Ryan Alexiev & Ram Menon
July 21, 2025

☕🤖 Here’s the latest enterprise AI news to keep you current:

  • Microsoft to cut up to 9,000 more jobs as it invests in AI

  • Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot

  • How Novo Nordisk Scaled GenAI to 20,000 Employees (And Saved 2.17 Hours Per Week Each)

  • Enterprise AI's missing piece: why tech giants are buying billion-dollar data companies

  • OpenAI is DOMINATING the AI wars (and it's not even close!)

  • From AI hype to AI execution: The builder's advantage is here

LATEST NEWS

Microsoft to cut up to 9,000 more jobs as it invests in AI

Microsoft is cutting up to 9,000 jobs (4% of its workforce) as part of its strategic shift toward artificial intelligence, with the Xbox gaming division particularly affected by cancellations of major projects including Perfect Dark and Everwild. The layoffs, Microsoft's fourth round this year, come as the company invests $80 billion in AI data centers and faces challenges selling its Copilot assistant to businesses, while competitors like Meta aggressively recruit top AI talent with signing bonuses exceeding $100 million.

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ROBOTICS

Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot

Amazon has reached a major milestone with 1 million robots now operating in its warehouses, putting the company on track to have equal numbers of robots and human workers in its facilities. The tech giant announced that 75% of its global deliveries are now robot-assisted and introduced a new AI model called DeepFleet that will boost robotic fleet speed by 10% through improved route coordination. Amazon's latest robot, Vulcan, features dual arms and touch-sensing capabilities, while the company's next-generation fulfillment centers will deploy 10 times more robots than current facilities.

USECASE OF THE WEEK

How Novo Nordisk Scaled GenAI to 20,000 Employees (And Saved 2.17 Hours Per Week Each)

Novo Nordisk's 20,000-employee GenAI rollout shattered assumptions about digital natives. Their data reveals experienced workers save more time AND produce higher quality work with AI tools—while younger employees often can't find practical use cases. Plus: the surprising "midcycle dip" that kills 15% of AI adopters and how to prevent it.

ENTERPRISE AI

Enterprise AI's missing piece: why tech giants are buying billion-dollar data companies

The data industry is experiencing a massive consolidation wave driven by the AI gold rush, with tech giants like Databricks and Salesforce making billion-dollar acquisitions to fill gaps in their data stacks. Companies are frantically buying up data startups built before the ChatGPT era, betting that superior data management will be the key to winning enterprise AI adoption—but industry experts question whether retrofitting pre-AI tools will actually work in today's rapidly evolving market. With over $300 billion invested in data startups since 2020 and venture funding drying up, these acquisitions offer struggling companies a lifeline while giving buyers pricing leverage, though the ultimate success of this "collect them all" strategy remains uncertain.

INSIDER PLAYBOOK

OpenAI is DOMINATING the AI wars (and it's not even close!)

Source: Coatue

OpenAI's explosive growth is reshaping the AI landscape with remarkable speed, reaching a $10 billion revenue run rate (up from $4 billion last year) and approaching one billion users while commanding 75% market share against competitors like Anthropic and Google. ChatGPT has become a top-5 global website, surpassing Twitter and Wikipedia, with companies increasingly switching from Microsoft Copilot to OpenAI's enterprise solutions due to superior user experience and new capabilities like SharePoint integration and Deep Research for internal data.

For executives, this means ChatGPT is rapidly becoming the standard for employee knowledge work, transforming how people discover information and research products as the shift from search engines to "answer engines" accelerates—making OpenAI's momentum impossible to ignore when planning long-term AI strategy and vendor commitments.

DEEP DIVE ANALYSIS

From AI hype to AI execution: The builder's advantage is here

The AI landscape has shifted from adoption to execution, with companies now racing to build and scale AI products rather than just experiment with them. According to ICONIQ's 2025 State of AI report surveying 300 software executives, AI-native companies are dramatically outpacing traditional businesses adding AI features—47% of AI-first companies have reached market fit compared to just 13% of AI-enabled ones.

The standout trend is the rise of agentic workflows, with nearly 80% of AI-native builders investing in autonomous systems that can take multi-step actions for users. Companies are embracing multi-model architectures (averaging 2.8 models per product) and shifting toward hybrid pricing models that combine subscriptions with usage-based charges, as 37% plan pricing adjustments this year.

Talent remains the biggest bottleneck, with AI/ML engineers taking over 70 days to hire and 54% of companies falling behind their hiring goals. Organizations are dedicating 10-20% of R&D budgets to AI development, with costs shifting from talent-heavy early stages to cloud infrastructure and model inference as products mature.

Internally, while 70% of employees have access to AI tools, only half use them regularly—but high-adoption companies deploying AI across seven or more use cases are seeing 15-30% productivity gains in areas like coding assistance and content generation. The message is clear: the AI advantage now belongs to those who can build, scale, and execute fastest.