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Welcome executives and professionals. How should work itself be designed when intelligence can be embedded, distributed, and increasingly delegated?

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:

• Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index.

• OpenAI B2B Signals.

• Claude for financial services.

• Prepare for board meetings with Claude.

• From SDLC to AO-DLC.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Insights for Executive+ members.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

MARKET & BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index

Brief: Microsoft analyzed trillions of anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals and surveyed 20,000 workers. As AI agents take on execution, the key question is whether organizations are built to capture the value created.

Breakdown:

• AI expands access to high-value work, with 49% of Microsoft 365 Copilot chat use now for analysis, decisions, and problem-solving.

• How people work with AI depends on engagement and agent use, creating four new modes: delegation, collaboration, asking, and discovery.

• Many workers are ready for AI, but organizations still lag behind, leaving skilled employees blocked by limited readiness and support.

• Organizational factors, culture, manager support, talent practices, account for 2x more of AI’s impact (67%) as individual behavior (32%).

Why it’s important: Many leaders focus on hiring the right people and assume results will follow. But data suggests the conditions leaders create matter more. The report introduces further guidance on building a Frontier Firm across employees, leadership, and the broader organization.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE BOARDROOM

AI blueprints you won’t find anywhere else

Brief: Dozens of CXOs, VPs, and directors are leveraging proven, step-by-step AI transformation blueprints not available elsewhere. A recent blueprint helped a Fortune 500 CAIO expand AI opportunity pipeline value by 42% and reduce projected time-to-production by 28%.

What’s inside The Boardroom:

• Executive AI transformation blueprints

• The Executive AI Index

• Full AI-native professional guides

• Extended version of Enterprise AI Executive

If you’re looking drive enterprise AI P&L impact, join us inside The Boardroom.

MARKET INSIGHT

OpenAI B2B Signals

Brief: OpenAI introduced B2B Signals, a business extension of OpenAI Signals. It offers a recurring view of how AI is diffusing across enterprises, using privacy-preserving, aggregated signals from enterprise use of OpenAI products.

Breakdown:

• Frontier firms, those at the 95th percentile of usage, now use 3.5x more intelligence per worker than typical firms, up from 2x a year ago.

• The gap is about depth, not just activity: message volume explains just 36% of the advantage, most of gap comes from more complex AI use.

• Agentic workflows are becoming a frontier marker, with leading firms now sending 16x more Codex messages per worker than typical firms.

• Leading firms measure depth, build production governance and enablement, scale what works, and move from chat to delegated agents.

Why it’s important: AI access and experimentation still matter, but they are no longer the differentiator. OpenAI’s research shows frontier firms are pulling ahead by using more intelligence per worker, adopting advanced tools and agents more intensely, and embedding AI deeper into workflows.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

Claude for financial services

Brief: Anthropic published a practical Claude deployment guide for financial services. The guide explains each product, shares customer examples from the industry, and offers tips on rolling out Claude across your firm.

Breakdown:

• Claude is delivered in products teams use directly (e.g. Claude Chat, Cowork, Code) and the Claude Platform for building your own agents.

• Anthropic released ten ready-to-run agent templates for work in financial services from building pitchbooks to screening KYC files.

• Examples of AI-first financial enterprises highlighted in the guide include AIG, IG Group, Moody’s, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

• Most successful Claude deployments follow a common path: teams establish the pilot foundation, run it, then scale (image above).

Why it’s important: As executives face pressures on margins, talent, and regulation, they are embracing AI for faster, better answers. Claude Chat is changing how teams access information, Claude Code is accelerating software development, and Claude Cowork is bringing execution capabilities to operators.

AI-NATIVE PROFESSIONAL

How to prepare for board meetings with Claude

Brief: In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Claude to search across scattered sources, and builds presentations, such as quarterly board reviews, using evidence gathered, reconciled, and cross-referenced.

Step-by-step:

1. Give it a starting point, such as a board deck prompt, and it expands searches, follows references, and reconciles conflicting sources.

2. By the time it builds the deck, it is working from evidence gathered and validated across multiple connected systems and sources.

3. Once the deck exists, Claude in PowerPoint lets teams refine sections, update talking points, and add charts directly within slides.

4. Continue working with Claude to turn the deck into an interactive briefing or stress-test the narrative before it’s presented.

Best practice: If you build quarterly board decks using a consistent structure, you can package the workflow as a plugin.

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

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

From SDLC to AO-DLC

Brief: Software engineering is being transformed from the software development life cycle (SDLC) to an agent-orchestrated development life cycle (AO-DLC), introducing a delivery model redefined by speed, skills, and control.

Breakdown:

• AO-DLC advances software delivery from code suggestions to human-led agent coordination where engineers guide agents and ensure quality.

• Agentic AI can compress delivery timelines and shift engineering effort toward higher-value work when paired with oversight and talent readiness.

• Teams need people who can dissect problems, guide agents, validate outputs quickly, and connect agent-built work into production systems.

• AO-DLC requires stronger controls to mitigate risks around autonomy, and overreliance on tools that teams do not fully understand.

Why it’s important: As the industry shifts toward coordinated agent orchestration, many enterprises already have AI agents in place but still lack the operating model, review structure, and architectural ownership needed to capture the full value of this transformation.

Accenture's 16-page report examines how AI data center growth is intensifying energy network pressures and the broader energy trilemma.

Deloitte released reports on AI marketplaces and enterprise AI capability assessments for scalable, trusted customer experiences.

IBM and SAP explored how agentic AI exposes ERP fragmentation and demands semantic alignment at scale.

Andreessen Horowitz argued the “AI Job Apocalypse” is "a complete fantasy" and that knowledge work is just getting started.

Google Cloud published a 60-page report on the ROI of AI-assisted software development and guides to move agents into production.

Bain shared an AI-era operating model and insights on rewiring demand generation around AI agents.

Anthropic signed a deal with SpaceX to lease Colossus 1, doubling Claude Code' usage caps across paid tiers and removing peak-hour restrictions.

Mozilla shared its experience using Claude Mythos Preview for security, saying the model patched more bugs in April than the past 15 months combined.

Anthropic launched dreaming, outcomes, and multi-agent orchestration, enabling agents to study past sessions and split complex jobs.

OpenAI began rolling out GPT-5.5-Instant to ChatGPT users, improving performance, memory, personalization, and more concise responses.

Microsoft expanded Copilot Cowork to iOS and Android, while adding built-in skills and business data plugins for business systems.

Anthropic reportedly committed $200B to Google cloud and chips over the next five years, representing over 40% of Google’s revenue backlog.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Roche - Head of Digital & AI Strategy

JPMorganChase - AI Strategy Executive Director

ABB - Physical AI Lead

EVENTS

Microsoft - Executive Summit - May 12, 2026

Anthropic - A CISO’s Guide to Agentic AI - May 12, 2026

IDC - Executive AI Dinner - June 11, 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.

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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.

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