WELCOME, EXECUTIVES AND PROFESSIONALS.

As with any truly disruptive technology, AI agents have the power to reshuffle the deck. Done right, they offer laggards a leapfrog opportunity to rewire their competitiveness.

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

In today’s edition:

• McKinsey’s agentic AI playbook for CEOs.

• a16z: AI in the enterprise 2025.

• Anthropic’s multi-agent research system.

• Google’s AI agent handbook.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

McKinsey’s agentic AI playbook for CEOs

Brief: McKinsey released a CEO playbook to address the “gen AI paradox,” outlining how AI agents can unlock scalable value and the CEO’s strategic mandate to lead transformation in the agentic era.

Breakdown:

• Nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI, yet just as many report no significant bottom-line impact. Think of it as the “gen AI paradox.”

• Enterprise-wide copilots scaled fast but offer limited value; 90% of transformative, vertical use cases remain stuck in pilot mode.

• AI agents can break the paradox by shifting gen AI from a reactive tool to a proactive, goal-driven collaborator, automating complex processes.

• Beyond efficiency gains, agents unlock agility and revenue streams. Realizing this value demands rethinking workflows from the ground up.

• A new AI architecture paradigm, the ‘Agentic AI Mesh’, is needed to enable scale but the real challenge is human: earning trust and driving adoption.

Why it’s important: Agentic AI is not an incremental step, it is the foundation of the next-generation operating model. CEOs who act now won’t just gain a performance edge. They will redefine how their organizations think, decide, and execute. The time for exploration is ending. The time for transformation is now.

MARKET INSIGHT

a16z: AI in the enterprise 2025

Brief: Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) surveyed 100 CIOs across 15 industries to understand how enterprise leaders are adopting, procuring, and allocating budgets for gen AI in 2025 and beyond.

Breakdown:

• Enterprise AI budgets exceeded forecasts, graduating from pilot programs and innovation funds to core IT and business unit recurring line-items.

• 37% of orgs now use 5+ models, up from 29% last year, as they grow more skilled at mixing models for optimal performance and cost efficiency.

• OpenAI, Google & Anthropic dominate market share; Meta & Mistral are top open-source options. OpenAI’s GPT-4o leads in production use.

• AI procurement now resembles traditional software procurement, with rigorous evaluations and rising switching costs from growing complexity.

• Meanwhile, the AI app landscape is maturing: off-the-shelf solutions are eclipsing custom builds and rewarding AI-native third party applications.

Why it’s important: Enterprise AI has shifted from experimentation to strategic deployment, with committed budgets and structured procurement. As model use diversifies and off-the-shelf apps proliferate, the market increasingly mirrors traditional software, yet with AI’s unique speed and complexity.

CASE STUDY

Building Anthropic’s multi-agent research system

Brief: Anthropic shared lessons from taking Claude’s multi-agent research capabilities from prototype to production, outlining proven principles others can apply when building and deploying multi-agent systems.

Breakdown:

• Research is dynamic and nonlinear; AI agents excel in this setting by adapting to new information and following evolving lines of inquiry.

• Anthropic’s Research feature plans based on user input, then uses tools to create parallel agents that search for information simultaneously.

• The company encoded expert human research strategies into prompts, like task decomposition and source quality evaluation.

• Effective agent evaluation starts with small samples, scales with LLM-as-judge, and relies on human review to catch what automation misses.

• Anthropic addresses production reliability and engineering challenges such as the stateful nature of agents, compounding errors, and more.

Why it’s important: Anthropic's experience demonstrates how multi-agent research systems can reliably scale through careful engineering, extensive testing, precise prompt tool design, and close collaboration among research, product, and engineering teams with deep AI agent knowledge.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

Google publishes AI agent handbook

Brief: Google published ‘The AI agent handbook’ 46-slides outlining 10 practical ways to use AI agents in business, including challenges, solutions, how to get started in Google Agentspace, and real enterprise examples.

Breakdown:

• Agentspace offers prebuilt agents that can search enterprise data, generate ideas, conduct deep research, shorten sales cycles, and more.

• Teams can build custom agents using Agent Designer or Vertex AI Agent Builder, then securely deploy them to Agentspace for enterprise-wide use.

• For instance, your colleagues are discussing a complex topic. It's clearly important, but there’s no time to review all the background material.

• You prompt an AI agent to summarize the relevant reports and data. Within moments, you have a clear summary in time for the meeting.

• The handbook includes enterprise examples from organizations like Deloitte, Nokia, Verizon, Decathlon, and Gordon Food Service.

Why it’s important: By 2028, 33% of enterprise applications will include agentic AI, up from under 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of daily work decisions to be made autonomously. Google's handbook shows how Agentspace, launched in December 2024, helps companies operationalize AI agents in impactful ways.

Meta shared how Shopify leveraged LLaVA, a multimodal model based on Llama, to optimize listing performance for billions of products.

IBM’s 32-page report, based on a global exec survey, explores how firms are reconciling ambitious AI expectations with practical realities.

KPMG published a 16-page report on the dawn of AI agents, offering a structured maturity pathway for scaling generative AI in enterprise.

PwC released an 18-slide AI playbook for leadership, covering strategy, change management, responsible AI, and trust in an AI-driven world.

Deloitte released a 13-page report with insights from leadership interviews to help Chief Strategy Officers align AI initiatives with business value.

LangChain shared case studies on how LinkedIn, BlackRock, and Uber built AI agents to improve hiring, asset management, and developer productivity.

Google synthesized hundreds of conversations with CXOs to uncover their biggest challenges when it comes to building Multi-Agent Systems (MAS).

AWS shared what enterprise leaders need to know about agents, covering economic impact, ethics, and the CIO’s critical role in driving adoption.

OpenAI released o3-pro, a leading reasoning model that beats rivals on benchmarks while simultaneously reducing its o3 prices by 80%

Meta acquired 49% of Scale AI for a reported $14.3B and tapped 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang to lead Meta’s AI overhaul.

Microsoft launched Copilot Vision with Highlights in the U.S., enabling the assistant to see users’ screens and provide contextual insights in real time.

OpenAI reached $10B ARR and is projected to hit $125B by 2029 while Sam Altman says humanity has passed the AI event horizon.

Mistral debuted Mistral Compute, offering GPU access, orchestration, and model training services, positioning itself as an alternative to cloud giants.

Glean, the enterprise AI startup, raised $150M at a $7.2B valuation, fueled by its Glean Agents platform and adoption from Fortune 500 enterprises.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman confirmed the companies first open-weight model will take more time but assures it will be “very, very worth the wait.”

Apple is reportedly targeting Spring 2026 for its AI-powered upgrades to Siri, nearly two years after announcing them at WWDC 2024.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Meta - Head of AI GTM Partnerships

Capgemini - Agentic AI Ecosystem Director

Gap Inc. - AI Senior Director

EVENTS

BCG - Gen AI Marketing at Reckitt - June 17, 2025

DSC - ALIGN AI Executive Summit - June 25, 2025

McKinsey - AI in Procurement - June 26, 2025

Complete this survey to get more value.

Here's how we can help you:

Promote your business to thousands of executives and professionals.

All the best,

Found this valuable? Share with a colleague.
Received this email from someone else? Sign up here.
Let's connect on LinkedIn.