How the Best Companies Use AI
April 19, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 2026, the gap between companies that are winning with AI and those that are falling behind is no longer about which tools they buy. A PwC study found that three-quarters of AI’s economic gains are captured by just 20% of firms—and those leaders are not using AI to do the same work with less. They are using it to grow. McKinsey’s recent AI transformation manifesto reinforces the point: the leading firms treat AI as a growth technology, not a cost-cutting one. They are two to three times more likely to use AI to identify new business opportunities and 2.6 times more likely to say AI helps them reinvent their business model.
The structural difference: Institutional AI versus individual AI
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction: The Growing AI Gap Between Companies** - Sets up the episode’s thesis: the best companies use AI not for efficiency, but for growth and business model transformation.
- 2 (03:45) **McKinsey’s 12 Themes: Key Principles for AI Leaders** - Walks through the most actionable findings from McKinsey’s report on separating AI leaders from laggards.
- 3 (06:46) **Agentic Engineering: The Next Capability to Master** - McKinsey’s call for companies to master agentic engineering, and the host’s critique that even leaders may be too narrow in their focus.
- 4 (07:42) **George Savolka’s Institutional AI vs. Individual AI** - Introduces the A16Z piece’s core argument: no company has become 10x more valuable, even though individuals have become 10x more productive.
- 5 (13:27) **Case Study: Ramp’s Internal AI System “Glass”** - The host pivots to a concrete example of a company building institutional AI infrastructure from scratch.
- 6 (15:02) **Principle 1: Don’t Limit Anyone’s Upside** - Ramp’s design philosophy rejects dumbing down AI for non-technical users.
- 7 (17:40) **Principle 2 & 3: One Person’s Breakthrough Becomes Everyone’s Baseline** - How Ramp ensures AI knowledge compounds across the organization.
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Show Notes
A deep dive into what separates the AI leaders from the laggers, drawing on the recent PwC study, McKinsey's AI Transformation Manifesto, George Sivulka's a16z essay on institutional vs. individual AI, and a close look at how Ramp built its internal AI system Glass. The throughline: leading companies treat AI as a growth and opportunity technology, and they build organizational systems that raise the floor for every employee rather than leaving people to figure it out alone.
Sources:
https://www.a16z.news/p/institutional-ai-vs-individual-ai
https://x.com/sebgoddijn/status/2042285915435937816
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