400,000+ business leaders (and teams at IBM, AWS & Zapier) start their day with The AI Report. 5 minutes. Plain English. No hype.
ADVERTISE | PODCASTS | EXECUTIVE’S PASS | B2B TRAINING
Hey
Welcome to The AI Report — the #1 AI newsletter for business leaders.
You don’t need to be technical. Just informed.
• 1. 🔎 See where AI delivers with Leebry by MacPaw
• 2. 🏘️ Join The AI Report Community (free guides inside)
• 3. ⚡️ Microsoft cuts 4,800 jobs
• 4. 💼 Your Business Briefing
• 5. 🤓 Teach your whole team AI with Upscaile
• 6. ✍️ Today’s Policy Corner
• 7. 🗞️ The News Bulletin
Are you ready to launch AI transformation for your company?
TOGETHER WITH LEEBRY BY MACPAW
90% of organizations deployed AI on data they didn’t audit
Most of the time, the model isn’t the problem.
Leebry’s AI at Work 2026 report surveyed 100 IT directors across North America to find out where enterprise AI is actually delivering, and where it’s quietly falling short.
What we found:
98% verify AI outputs before acting on them. Only 2% trust AI enough to act without review.
73% have no formal way to measure whether their AI investments are working
More than a quarter have already paused or abandoned at least one AI initiative
Only 17% report measurable results from their AI initiatives
The full report covers which use cases are delivering real results, which are being quietly shelved, and what separates the two groups.
THE AI REPORT COMMUNITY
New here? Our free community is where the extra stuff lives, including:
📊 2026 AI Tool Stack Guide (20+ pages)
🤖 HubSpot x The AI Report: ChatGPT at Work Guide
📝 Claude + ChatGPT Prompt Library (75+ prompts)
AND you can gain access to your choice of two resources available in our premium Leaders Launch Program for free.
Latest in AI
Microsoft cuts 4,800 jobs
🚨 Our Report
Microsoft has laid off approximately 4,800 employees, representing 2.1% of its global workforce, with Xbox and commercial sales bearing the heaviest impact. The cuts come as the company redirects resources toward its newly launched $2.5 billion Frontier Company AI business unit.
🔓 Key Points
Xbox will lose 1,600 staffers immediately, with about 3,200 total cuts expected through fiscal year 2027, in what Xbox CEO Asha Sharma called "the most significant restructure in Xbox history."
Chief People Officer Amy Coleman stated the eliminated roles "are not being replaced by AI," but acknowledged that AI is changing how work gets done and automating tasks employees previously performed.
Microsoft is flattening Xbox's management structure from 14 layers to no more than five, while transitioning four gaming studios, including Ninja Theory and Double Fine Productions, to new ownership or independent status.
🔐 Relevance
For enterprise leaders, Microsoft's layoffs illustrate a pattern now visible across Big Tech: job cuts correlating directly with increased AI investment. The company's simultaneous $2.5 billion commitment to AI deployment and 4,800-person reduction signals how major vendors are restructuring for an AI-first future. With nearly 154,000 tech workers laid off in the first half of 2026, executives should expect similar workforce realignments to accelerate as AI automation reshapes operational models.
The AI Report Podcast
Why AI Adoption Fails Inside Most Companies | Scott Likens, Global Chief AI Engineer, PwC
Stop wasting time researching AI tools
The hardest part of adopting AI isn't finding tools, it's knowing which ones are actually worth using.
That's why we've upgraded our Tool Database into a completely redesigned Tool Index, featuring 5,500+ AI tools, structured comparisons, powerful search and filtering, and a new AI Stack Builder that recommends the best tools for your business based on your team, budget, and existing workflow.
Spend less time researching and more time implementing AI.
THE BUSINESS BRIEFING: MARKETING (powered by Upscaile)
L'Occitane en Provence (global beauty retailer, 90+ countries) was stuck on a post-purchase plateau. Their CRM sent replenishment reminders 30 days after purchase, whether customers finished their moisturizer in two weeks or two months. Static timing meant messages landed too early or too late. Revenue from repeat purchases flatlined despite growing manual effort from their marketing team.
Tool used: Replenit -- AI Decision Engine that calculates individual consumption speed per SKU and triggers personalized replenishment emails at the precise moment of need.
Result: Post-purchase revenue up 235%. Integration went live in 21 days. Zero manual list-pulling required. The AI now runs their replenishment program 24/7 across their full product catalog.
The lesson: Average-based timing kills replenishment campaigns. L'Occitane stopped sending "30-day reminders" and started sending "your bottle is almost empty" messages. The shift from segment-of-many to segment-of-one made the difference.
Steal this: Pull your replenishment email performance this week. Check open rates and conversion by days-since-purchase. If you see drop-off at your standard interval, your timing is wrong. Test splitting high-volume SKUs into faster and slower consumption cohorts before automating the full catalog.
TOGETHER WITH UPSCAILE
Teach your whole team AI — the Stanford way
Right now a few people are experimenting with AI, the rest are hesitant, and there's no shared standard.
Upscaile fixes that in 90 minutes.
It's the same curriculum Arturo Ferreira delivered to 50+ Stanford students, refined across 12+ enterprise teams.
One live virtual session, unlimited attendees, $5,000 flat — while typical workshops charge $500–$1,500 a seat. Your team leaves with prompting frameworks, safe repeatable workflows, and AI applied to your real use cases, plus all the materials to keep.
THE POLICY CORNER
Illinois mandates annual AI audits for high-risk models, $3M fines start now.
Governor JB Pritzker signed the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act into law Monday, requiring large AI companies operating in Illinois to develop risk mitigation frameworks and conduct annual independent audits. The law applies to AI developers with $500M+ revenue and models meeting specific compute thresholds. Companies must publish transparency frameworks explaining how they measure catastrophic risk, apply safety standards, and respond to incidents.
Deadline: In effect now. First compliance audits required within 12 months.
Risk: $1M fine for first violation, $3M for subsequent violations. Illinois Attorney General has direct enforcement authority.
Your move: If you're deploying high-capability AI models (OpenAI, Anthropic, or comparable), verify your vendor has published their transparency framework and third-party audit protocol. Document that verification this week.
📚 RETHINKING YOUR CAREER? START HERE
80,000 Hours: How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good by Benjamin Todd
If you're rethinking your career path (or just want to make sure you're spending your working years well), this one's worth a look.
Todd breaks down how to find work that's genuinely fulfilling and makes a real impact: practical, research-backed advice rather than vague "follow your passion" platitudes. Great pick for anyone weighing next steps or feeling stuck in a career rut.
AI News
🎬 AI actor Tilly Norwood lands first movie role: The AI creation will star in "Misaligned," a comedy drama about an artificial being developing human ambitions, deepening Hollywood anxiety over synthetic performers replacing actors. FULL STORY
💰 Claude Fable 5 moves to per-token billing Tuesday: Anthropic ends subscription-included access tomorrow, charging $50 per million output tokens, with some developers reporting $100 Max plans drained in under nine minutes during heavy agentic use. FULL STORY
🇬🇧 UK regulator calls AI financial advice an "arms race": FCA executive Sheldon Mills warns that 11 million UK adults now use ChatGPT for money decisions outside regulatory oversight, pushing for expanded powers over OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. FULL STORY
📸 Google now trains AI on your uploaded images and audio: A quiet privacy update opts users into saving media from Search, Lens, Translate, and voice queries for AI model training unless you manually disable "Save Media" in settings. FULL STORY
Trending AI Tools (Sponsored by the AI Executive’s Pass)
A curated look at the AI tools quietly transforming how teams work.
Incogni:* Data brokers feed AI your info. Incogni removes you from 200+ of them — automatically
Eververse is an AI product management platform for prioritizing features and building roadmaps
AgentX is a no-code platform for creating and deploying AI chatbots in minutes*indicates a sponsored tool, if any
⚡️ Why pay for 4–6 separate AI tools at full price when the AI Executive’s Pass fixes that?
The Money: AI infrastructure secures long-term commitments
Two of this week's largest AI capital events funded long-term asset control, not compute access. As hyperscalers lock in 20-year data center leases and observability platforms acquire ML teams outright, investors are backing companies that own their AI infrastructure stack rather than rent it.
Deals to know:
TeraWulf (20-year lease, $19B) -- Anthropic commits to 401 MW Kentucky data center campus through 2047, with initial capacity late 2027. Investors: Investment-grade credit backing
Datadog (Acquisition + R&D commitment, $1B+) -- Acquired Adaptive ML for RLOps and agentic models while committing $1B+ to internal AI R&D for Toto 2.0 and production agents. Investors: Benchmark raises PT to $330
Signal: Smart money betting AI's competitive moat isn't model performance, it's infrastructure ownership. Companies controlling compute, power, and ML tooling will command premium valuations as rental costs compress margins.
Thoughts on today's edition?Hit me up on LinkedIn, I read every message. |  |
Refer a Friend
Latest episode: Why AI Adoption Fails Inside Most Companies → Listen here
Want to reach 400k+ decision-makers? → Sponsor us
Until next time, Arturo and Liam.
P.S. Unsubscribe if you don’t want us in your inbox anymore.
