I’ve spent the past month talking to CEOs across cannabis retail, food tech, healthcare SaaS, and global consulting. My goal was simple: learn how leaders are actually using AI.
The experimentation phase is over. You’re either building AI into your operating system, or you’re falling behind.
SC Moatti, Managing Partner at Mighty Capital, calls this “relativity physics”—a world where product innovation moves four times faster than before. The CEOs winning right now understand five things about AI that their competitors don’t.
1. AI Is Infrastructure, Not a Project
Stop treating AI like a side initiative for your innovation team.
Matt Blosl, CEO of DexCare, puts it bluntly: “Think of AI as just a new coding language. It’s a new foundational tool and technology that we have. It’s not a project.”
If you’re running AI as a project, you’ve already lost. AI must reshape your culture, your hiring, and your metrics. This is foundational work—the same way you wouldn’t treat your ERP system or your cloud infrastructure as “projects.”
Ask yourself: Does your executive team discuss AI in every strategic meeting? If not, you’re treating it like a project.
2. Mine Your Boring Data for Profit
Forget the generative AI hype. The real money is in your existing data.
Chris Jones, CEO of Cannabis Express, doesn’t use AI to write marketing copy. He uploads transaction logs from 22 stores and asks: “Which products are more than six months old, and what percent should I discount them?”
This simple question saves his company hundreds of thousands of dollars. AI spots patterns humans miss—staffing inefficiencies, inventory drag, margin erosion.
Your competitive advantage isn’t in the technology. It’s in the data you already own. Upload your sales reports. Upload your customer service logs. Upload your operational metrics. Then ask AI to find what you’re missing.
The question is: What are you leaving on the table because you’re not interrogating your own data?
3. Personalize to Win
Your customers are drowning in choice. AI helps you surface the right option at the right time.
David Rabie, CEO of Tovala, uses AI to predict what specific households want to eat before they know it themselves. “How do you use AI based on what people have told us they like, what we’ve seen them cook, what we’ve seen them reorder? To surface the right meals for them and deliver this personalized experience.”
This isn’t about recommendation engines. This is about reducing decision fatigue. Your customers don’t want more options. They want the right option.
Where in your business are customers overwhelmed by choice? That’s where AI creates value.
4. Build Your Moat or Get Acquired
If you’re planning an exit or a capital raise, listen carefully: AI is now the primary driver of valuation.
Brett Sharenow, CEO of BroadScope Consulting, reports that 55% of VC money is going to startups where AI is built into the core business. Not bolted on. Built in.
“Once you’re using AI well in the business, it gives you a lead against competition. It creates a moat around the business. The lead actually increases over time against competition. It’s a flywheel.”
Investors aren’t looking for AI as a feature. They’re looking for AI as a defensive moat that widens the gap between you and everyone else.
Your competitors are building this moat right now. Are you?
5. Lead or Disappear
AI adoption is a leadership issue, not a technical one.
Ross Wainwright, CEO of Perceptyx, is direct: “If you don’t have an AI agenda, it’s not that you could be disrupted, you could actually become obsolete. I think it’s moving that fast.”
You must lead from the front. Give your teams permission to break things. Safety is the enemy of speed right now.
The “wait and see” window has closed. SC Moatti warns we’re looking at a timeline where market leaders vanish in two years if they fail to become AI-native. She calls it the “Nokia effect.”
What You Must Do Now
Stop reading articles about AI. Start using it.
Pick one area where you’re leaving money on the table. Upload your data. Ask AI what you’re missing.
Pick one customer pain point where choice creates friction. Build personalization into that experience.
Pick one strategic initiative where AI can create a moat. Make it foundational, not a project.
You have a short period of time before your competitors make you irrelevant. What will you do today?
