This Week's Focus ⤵️
I almost didn't publish this week.
I'm neck-deep in two software projects: Sprinklenet's Knowledge Spaces and a client-owned intelligence platform sitting on top of multiple IT systems and data streams.
I've been moving fast. Really fast. Some of my teammates have felt that.
Here's what I've learned: when your mind is rested and focused, and you're surrounded by other sharp, nimble people who can take your work from intense build sessions to production-ready code, the output is unlike anything I've seen in twenty years of doing this. It's not one person. It's the right people, with the right tools, operating with real urgency.
The bottleneck has shifted. It's not compute. It's not software. It's the quality of human judgment and the willingness to act.
That's the question every CEO and Board is now facing: what do you keep, what do you eliminate, and what do you act on right now?
Jack Dorsey just answered it at Block. It's worth paying close attention.
Ok, let's get into it.
Sponsor of This Week's AI Newsletter:
This edition is brought to you by Sprinklenet Knowledge Spaces. The control layer that sits between your guardrails, your compliance requirements and your ability to rapidly integrate and swap out multiple LLMs within your organization as needed, for both your internal employees and external users.
Diving Deeper 🤿
This edition is not about the tech. It's about the humans.
It's about organizational decision-making and the human cost of what's unfolding right now with AI. What Jack Dorsey just did at Block is worth your full attention.
Billions of dollars will be lost.
Billions will be made.
And most of it will come down to who has the tools, who knows how to use them, and who has the speed and decisiveness to reinvent business processes that enterprises have relied on for decades.
If Jack can do this, what's your plan?
I like being in the operational weeds, designing systems, building them, deploying them, refining them. But it all starts at the top. And the human decisions are what I'm finding leaders struggle with most.
A few months ago I spoke with a CEO wrestling with what to do about medium-level performers who haven't risen to the moment. They're running about $100M in ARR with a compelling technology service, but they need to adapt and they need to do it fast. The CEO knows the unit leaders have to be the right people for a world that looks nothing like it did two years ago.
It's no longer a question of whether AI can do the job. Agents, LLMs, MCP servers, data integration tools, it's all there. What's weighing on the hearts and minds of CEOs is the human capital question.
Jack Dorsey put it well:
"I had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. I chose the latter. Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. I'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. A smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures."
Core Principles in Practice 💡
Decisiveness over deliberation. Smart CEOs are now more afraid of inaction than anything else. And they should be. The market is not going to reward slow movers on this. The rest of 2026 is going to be incredibly disruptive.
Protect your best contributors. Block can cut 4,000 roles because there are people at that company who are now able to contribute outsized amounts of value. The priority isn't headcount, it's output per person. Identify your force multipliers and get everything out of their way.
Focus and precision are the real competitive edge. In this world of fast-moving AI, there's so much noise and so many artifacts that can get in the way. It's a bit like a video game. There are a lot of things being thrown at you but you've got to keep going through the levels. You have to advance. If you don't advance, you lose. If you get caught up in too much noise, you lose. Protect the productivity time of your highest-impact people.
Expect growing pains and keep going anyway. AI-powered development is powerful but it's not magic. I've been working in Claude Code, Codex, and a bit of Gemini and Grok all week on updates to Sprinklenet's Knowledge Spaces. My AI-assisted code absolutely created a variety of conflicts with our production systems and it took other engineers quite a few days to decipher and merge some of my changes. That's reality. We're all getting better and faster, but it does require some humility and there are growing pains along the way. But the contributions far outweigh the friction and I'll keep marching on.
Get outside the browser. If your AI experience starts and ends with the ChatGPT or Claude apps in your browser, you're only seeing a fraction of what's possible. Get into your terminal. Start connecting tools. Start experimenting. Learn fast.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
I think I've used that quote before in an earlier edition of this newsletter, but it's never been more true than it is today. So there you go, another Peter Drucker quote about the future and who owns it.
AI Trends & News 📰
Block Cuts Nearly Half Its Workforce in AI Bet
Jack Dorsey's Block laid off over 4,000 employees, roughly half the company, citing AI as the driving force behind the restructuring. Shares surged about 25% after hours. Dorsey signaled that most companies will reach the same conclusion within a year.
🔗 CNBC: Block Slashes Workforce by Nearly Half
Anthropic Holds Firm Against Pentagon's AI Ultimatum
The Pentagon gave Anthropic a Friday deadline to allow unrestricted military use of Claude or risk losing its $200M defense contract. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei responded that the company will not loosen restrictions against autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, even under threat of the Defense Production Act.
🔗 CNBC: Anthropic CEO Says Pentagon Threats 'Do Not Change Our Position'
OpenAI Resets Compute Spending Targets to $600B by 2030
OpenAI walked back earlier projections and told investors it's now targeting approximately $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, with projected revenue exceeding $280 billion. Meanwhile, ChatGPT has surpassed 900 million weekly active users and the company announced a strategic enterprise partnership with Capgemini.
🔗 CNBC: OpenAI Resets Spending Expectations
Claude Sesh
Closer to Alignment 🏆
If you're an executive reading this, the most important thing you can do is stop delegating your AI strategy to a committee. This is a C-level concern that requires your direct involvement, not a task for someone to study for six months and produce a report.
Start by asking a simple question: who in your organization is already using AI to produce meaningfully more? Those are your force multipliers. Build around them. Give them air cover. Remove the bureaucratic obstacles from their path.
Then ask the harder question: what would your organization look like with 30-40% fewer people but dramatically higher output? That's not a theoretical exercise anymore. Block just did it.
The rest of 2026 will bring more of the same, across every industry. The executives who get ahead of this, honestly and humanely the way Dorsey modeled, will be the ones still standing when the dust settles.
Balanced & Insightful ⚖️
There's nuance here that matters, because credibility matters more than hype.
I've shipped more code in the past month using Claude Code and Codex than I have in the past two years. That's a real statement. But it's not all smooth sailing.
My AI-generated code created real merge conflicts with production. Experienced engineers spent days untangling some of it. That's the current reality of building enterprise software with AI assistance. When people talk about how wonderful developing with Claude Code is, they're mostly right, but it's still not magic and there's still a lot that needs to happen when you're building serious software.
The analogy I keep coming back to is fitness. You don't bench press 225 pounds at the end of your first week. It takes years of training to get there.
My point is you don't just get fit overnight, and you don't get AI-fluent overnight either. It requires real commitment, not a pilot program or a committee. You have to start somewhere, and the organizations that treat AI fluency as an optional skill are making the same mistake as companies that treated internet adoption as optional in 1999.
Mindset | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
"We're evaluating AI" | Acceptable | Dangerously late |
"We have a pilot program" | Forward-thinking | Table stakes |
"AI is embedded in our workflows" | Leading edge | Baseline for survival |
"We've restructured around AI" | Radical | What Block just did |
My goal in 2026 is to make my clients a lot of money. Twenty years in algorithms, commercializing early-stage AI, advancing it into production, and now building and deploying systems at speed.
I'm standing on the shoulders of people much smarter than me. But right now the energy, the tools, and the moment are aligned. That's why I'm up at 5am. That's why I'm relentlessly in these systems every day. I'm here to help CEOs, Boards and investors move fast and win.
If you want to collaborate, drop me a line.
Need Expert Guidance?
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Jamie’s Weekly Spotify Mix 🎵
Same playlist as last week. Still listening.
There is a line in Fleetwood Mac's Gypsy that goes "Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice."
The technology is phenomenal and the market is on fire.
Back to coding. Have a nice weekend.
🎺🎧 Note: Web Edition Only
