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Welcome executives and professionals. The organizations escaping pilot purgatory rarely do it with a single existing team on its own.

Since the previous edition, we have reviewed hundreds of the latest insights in agentic and generative AI, spanning best practices, case studies, market dynamics, and innovations.

This briefing outlines what is driving material value — and why it’s important.

In today’s briefing:

• From enterprise AI POC to P&L.

• McKinsey’s 2026 state of AI.

• The CIO's role in the AI-SaaS shift.

• Enterprise agentic AI readiness.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Insights for Executive+ members.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

From enterprise AI POC to P&L

Brief: McKinsey published insights on escaping AI pilot purgatory, moving from proof of concept to production P&L, capturing the engineering and delivery practices that separate initiatives that move the business from those that simply stall.

Breakdown:

• It explains why the gap between AI's promise and its production reality comes down to delivery, not better models or new frameworks.

• Two McKinsey engagements anchor the lessons: a global manufacturer working with AWS, and a conglomerate scaling agentic AI at speed.

• Lessons include redesigning workflows alongside the model, measuring in P&L rather than accuracy, and designing for adoption.

• Also: own the outcome end-to-end, staff for production AI engineering, codify and replicate, and build business-led AI capability.

Why it's important: For large organizations with the budget and executive sponsorship for AI at scale, technology is rarely the binding constraint. Capable models, mature frameworks and cloud infrastructure exist. What stalls is the move from proof of concept to production impact.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH RESOLVE

Break the reactive IT cycle

Brief: Experience Resolve's platform-agnostic, governed execution layer that combines AI reasoning with deterministic automation. Trusted by global enterprise IT teams to handle 100K+ tickets/month.

The Resolve Platform edge:

• Increase IT capacity without expanding headcount

• Maximize existing technology investments

• Ensure AI acts only on trusted context and approved workflows

Explore the Resolve Platform.

MARKET INSIGHT

McKinsey’s 2026 state of AI

Brief: McKinsey's 2026 State of AI drew responses from 1,719 participants across 97 nations, spanning regions, industries, company sizes, functions, and tenures. Thirty-six percent work at organizations with over $1 billion in annual revenue.

Breakdown:

• 40% of respondents from large organizations, those above $1 billion in annual revenue, report scaling AI agents, up from 27% last year.

• Many organizations are already scaling software coding agents: about two in ten overall, rising to 31% among larger organizations.

• 20% say AI operating costs, including tokens, constrained their usage, though most still plan to increase their AI investments.

• 80% report AI has improved their individual productivity, and 50% say it helps them make better decisions in their day-to-day work.

Why it’s important: Organizations are deploying agentic coding tools and confronting the true cost of AI while still working to capture more of the value their workers are deriving from their individual use of AI. Just 37% attribute any EBIT impact to AI use, roughly flat year over year.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

The CIO's role in the AI-SaaS shift

Brief: EY detailed how AI is transforming enterprise SaaS and what CIOs should do next. Chief Information Officers can steer how AI reshapes their SaaS estate, unlocking greater value across their wider enterprise ecosystem.

Breakdown:

• AI is reshaping how enterprise work gets done, challenging traditional SaaS interaction models and redefining how value is created.

• Scaling AI in enterprise environments reinforces the importance of governance, reliability and the SaaS platforms that deliver them.

• Leaders should strengthen platforms while embedding intelligence enterprise-wide, pairing capabilities with disciplined execution.

• The future of SaaS lies in combining AI-driven experiences with platforms that can deliver control, consistency and accountability.

Why it’s important: AI is challenging how enterprises interact with SaaS, raising whether these platforms will evolve or be bypassed. Success will depend on how CIOs guide the shift, preserving embedded compliance guardrails and domain knowledge while unlocking new value.

AI-NATIVE PROFESSIONAL

How to manage emails with ChatGPT Work

Brief: In this guide, you'll learn how to clear an overloaded inbox and see which messages need a reply, a decision, or your attention. ChatGPT Work suggests a cleanup, drafts replies in your voice, and checks for new email on a schedule.

Step-by-step:

1. Run the starter prompt in ChatGPT Work in the browser or desktop app, connect your email via the Gmail or Outlook plugin.

2. You can also connect Slack, Google Drive, and your calendar, giving ChatGPT more context for the replies it prepares on your behalf.

3. ChatGPT reviews recent mail, identifies messages that need attention, proposes a cleanup, and prepares replies.

4. Once the basic workflow is running, use the follow-up prompts to draft recurring updates, or adjust how it drafts replies.

Best practice: Keep cleanup and reply actions approval-based until you trust the rules. Review the first few batches closely, then widen the scope.

For the full guide, including prompts, upgrade to Executive+ or The Boardroom.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Enterprise agentic AI readiness

Brief: Infosys published insights on why enterprises racing to scale agentic AI rarely move past pilots, exploring the reasons behind the stall and what organizations need to get right to move from pilot to enterprise scale.

Breakdown:

• Agent development accounts for only 30% of what it takes to scale agentic AI. The other 70% is where most enterprise programs stall.

• Four areas drive that stall: organizational alignment, security and compliance, platform integration, and stakeholder conviction.

• Enterprises need a formal readiness check across all four areas, since this is what signals an organization is truly ready to scale.

• Success depends less on how advanced the agents are, and more on how well the enterprise plans for everything built around them.

Why it’s important: Enterprises that scale agentic AI successfully plan for the full 100% of program effort, from the agents themselves to everything beneath the surface. Building the readiness gate now, rather than discovering the gap mid-program, is what unlocks scale.

Infosys published a 16-page report on the AI ROI gap, as enterprise AI spending climbs but leaders grow impatient for clear returns.

Salesforce released its first State of Agentic AI report, surveying 2,000 leaders on what separates real returns from costly pilots.

Infosys introduced AI FinOps and a decision yield metric, governing reasoning spend by business outcome rather than token volume.

Deloitte published a 14-page white paper with Google Cloud on scaling AI across EMEA banking and insurance, from pilot to scale.

IBM argued every enterprise already runs an ungoverned agent fleet, needing a control plane for visibility, identity and lifecycle.

ISG outlined the agentic pyramid, where shared context becomes an organisational asset and every employee manages agents below them.

Anthropic introduced the Model Hardware Standard, letting AI agents find, learn and run lab machines that once needed custom code.

OpenAI published an open letter with 116 companies, including Anthropic, warning AI-enabled cyberattacks will grow more widespread.

Nvidia is reportedly acquiring open model hub Hugging Face for $12.9B, as open-source interest keeps surging on Chinese model gains.

Google released Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, an upgraded video model adding 40-sec scene extensions, 4K upscaling and a top Arena ranking.

Salesforce partnered with Anthropic on Claudeforce, putting a 37-skill sales plugin into Claude and making it the default in Slack.

Z AI confirmed that Ox Alpha, the anonymous model that took over the internet, is its new GLM-5.3-Flash, with weights now published.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

BDO USA - AI Transformation Leader

Deloitte - Vice President, Sales Executive – OpenAI

Google - AI Strategy Lead

EVENTS

McKinsey - Physical AI - September 9, 2026

Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo - October 19-22, 2026

The AI Leadership Summit - November 17-18, 2026

Reach enterprise AI decision-makers:

• 66% of readers are C-level executives or VP and Director-level leaders.

• 63.2% of the audience is based in the U.S., EU, UK, ANZ, and Singapore.

• Read by leaders at Microsoft, Deloitte, the Fortune 500, and more.

Guaranteed impression and custom sponsorship packages available, with post-send performance reporting.

Conceived as a practical communication for executives Lewis Walker has worked with, this briefing has become a trusted resource for thousands of senior decision-makers shaping the future of enterprise AI.

We welcome your feedback.