WELCOME, EXECUTIVES AND PROFESSIONALS.

When its industry is being disrupted by AI, a company needs someone with their finger on the pulse to make sure they’re placing the right bets.

Since the previous edition, we’ve reviewed hundreds of the latest agentic and generative AI best practices, case studies, market dynamics and innovation insights. Here’s the top 1%...

In today’s briefing:

• IBM explores C-suite synergies for AI ROI.

• Google shares agentic AI services playbook.

• OpenAI introduces ChatGPT agent.

• Capgemini assesses the rise of agentic AI.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

CXO INSIGHT

IBM explores C-suite synergies for AI ROI

Brief: IBM released a 32-page report on how Chief AI Officers navigate complexity, collaborate across the C-suite, and drive transformation to deliver stronger, measurable ROI throughout the enterprise.

Breakdown:

• Organizations with a distinct CAIO role, rather than assigning duties to other execs like the CDO, see 10% higher ROI on AI investments.

• 26% of companies have a CAIO today, up from 11% in 2023. Of these, 57% report directly to the CEO or Board of Directors.

• 57% of CAIOs were appointed internally, and two-thirds believe most organizations will formalize the role within two years.

• CAIOs typically lead AI strategy, manage budgets, and drive enterprise-wide adoption, channeling focus and effort toward AI value.

• C-suite collaboration is critical. The report outlines how CEOs, COOs, CHROs, and tech leaders can align efforts to improve AI ROI.

Why it’s important: While C-suite compositions vary by organizational context, IBM research shows that firms with a distinct CAIO role typically achieve stronger AI ROI. As AI becomes more central to competitive advantage, more firms are expected to formalize the role and strengthen C-suite synergies.

BEST PRACTICE & MARKET INSIGHT

Google shares agentic AI services playbook

Brief: Google published a 72-page playbook to help service providers, spanning advisory, implementation, and maintenance, capture the agentic AI opportunity. The guidance is largely vendor-agnostic.

Breakdown:

• Strategy firm BCG estimates the total addressable market (TAM) for agentic AI services at ~$1T globally, just among Google Cloud partners.

• This opportunity stems from long-standing pain points that have hindered enterprises from maximizing productivity and growth.

• Tailored agents now offer a path to solve many enterprises challenges (e.g. loan underwriter agents assessing risk/issuing approvals in finance).

• Google outlines strategies for evolving service provider offerings, including transaction-based and outcome-driven pricing models.

• The report includes TAM data, high-impact use cases across tech, finance, CPG, healthcare, and more, plus separate playbooks for each industry.

Why it’s important: Google Cloud has a smaller share of the enterprise market than AWS and Microsoft, but its growth is accelerating, fueled by AI and partners, which contributed 80% of its incremental revenue last year. The role of ecosystems in driving success has never been more important.

INNOVATION INSIGHT

OpenAI introduces ChatGPT agent

Brief: OpenAI released ChatGPT agent, a unified agentic system that combines interaction, synthesis, connectors, and conversational capabilities to complete tasks leveraging its own virtual computer.

Breakdown:

• ChatGPT Agent Mode integrates Operator’s web interaction, Deep Research’s synthesis, and chat fluency to power a cohesive system.

• Delegate tasks to agents, such as “analyze three competitors and create slides,” while you focus on other priorities simultaneously.

• Agent Mode runs on its own virtual computer with ChatGPT, shifting between reasoning and actions to complete long-horizon tasks.

• ChatGPT requests approval before executing important actions. You can pause, intervene, stop tasks, or take control at any point.

• Pro, Plus, and Team users can access Agent Mode via the Tools dropdown, with Enterprise and Edu access rolling out in the coming weeks.

Why it’s important: ChatGPT agent, along with agentic systems like Google Gemini Agent Mode, is in its early stages. While capable of handling complex tasks, optimizing accuracy, speed, and control is key if enterprises are to fully realize the value of increasingly autonomous agents.

MARKET & BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Capgemini assesses the rise of agentic AI

Brief: Capgemini published a 116-slide report on agentic AI, based on insights from 1,500 execs across 14 countries, including the US, UK, France, and India. The report explores the value at stake, trust, and scaling adoption.

Breakdown:

• Firms scaling semi- to fully autonomous AI agents are projected to generate $382M in 3 years, 5x more than peers via revenue and savings.

• 2% of firms have scaled AI agents; 61% are exploring deployment. By 2028, 25% of processes are expected to be semi- to fully autonomous.

• Trust in fully autonomous AI agents dropped from 43% to 27% in a year, driven by ethical concerns and unclear capabilities.

• 93% of execs believe scaling AI agents over the next 12 months will offer a competitive edge, yet nearly half lack a clear strategy.

• Capgemini outlines how AI agents, gen AI, and traditional AI/automation can be orchestrated to transform processes (see image above).

Why it’s important: The economic potential of agentic AI is significant, but realizing it requires more than technology, enterprises must rethink processes, embed ethics and safety from the start, and build trust in human-AI collaboration to enhance decision-making, productivity, and growth.

Goldman Sachs CIO writes that while some speculate agentic AI will displace more junior roles, they are in fact the “AI natives” who will shape the future.

Bain & Company partnered with Dr. Andrew Ng on AI transformation for clients, and shared insights on autonomous financial planning.

Forrester argued that in AI many senior executives have found “the perfect justification” for the workforce optimization they’ve been contemplating.

Cognizant published 14-pages on how multi-agent AI is transforming global exhibition experiences, including details of its AI accelerator.

Anthropic shared how Zapier leveraged Claude Enterprise to drive company-wide AI adoption with 800+ AI agents deployed.

McKinsey shared research on AI’s uneven impact on talent, the future of AI in insurance, and accelerating data product development with gen AI.

Microsoft shared how EY is leveraging Copilot and agents to improve productivity and early plans to begin orchestrating entire agentic teams.

The Future of Life Institute released a 101-page AI Safety Index assessing seven leading firms efforts to manage AI risks, including OpenAI and Google.

Anthropic launched Claude for Financial Services, integrating market data and enterprise platforms to transform how professionals perform financial analysis.

AWS unveiled Bedrock AgentCore in preview, a platform designed to help enterprises deploy and manage secure AI agents at scale.

Anthropic is attracting investor interest for a new funding round at a reported valuation of over $100B, according to The Information.

AWS launched Kiro, an AI IDE combining agentic coding with spec-driven development to help teams move from prototype to production.

Mistral rolled out major updates to its Le Chat platform, including Deep Research, Voice Mode, Projects, and new image editing capabilities.

Nvidia introduced Canary-Qwen-2.5B, a new SOTA speech recognition model that moved to the top spot on Hugging Face’s Open ASR leaderboard.

Cognition AI, maker of coding agent Devin, acquired rival Windsurf just days after Google’s $2.4B deal to license its tech and hire talent.

Lovable founder Anton Osika announced a $200M funding round that values the Swedish AI app-building startup at $1.8B.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

ServiceNow - AI Vice President

GE Aerospace - AI Executive Leader

C3 AI - Group Vice President

EVENTS

Gartner - Grow Revenue with Gen AI - August 18, 2025

AI Risk Summit - August 19-20, 2025

Everest Group - Gen AI for GBS & GCCs - August 19, 2025

Initiated as a practical communication for executives with whom Lewis, the editor, partners on AI transformation programs, this briefing now serves as a trusted resource for thousands of senior decision-makers shaping the future of enterprise AI.

If your AI product or service adds value to this audience, contact us for information on a limited number of sponsorship opportunities.

We also welcome feedback as we continue to refine the briefing.