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Signals & Systems #3: AI Is Outrunning the Hype

Written by Filip Filipov |24 June 2025| 0 Comments

Signals & Systems is a series sharing straightforward insights on technology, leadership, and day-to-day execution, directly from the operator’s perspective. Written by OAG COO Filip Filipov, each edition decodes the signals pointing to the future of tech and the systems we're using to get there.

Filip Filipov

Welcome back! Every second Tuesday we decode the signals and map the systems shaping tech, AI, and travel. Today: why the current AI cycle is outrunning even the hype—and what that means for talent, tooling, and tomorrow’s org charts.

1 | Signals: the acceleration is real

  • $100 M signing bonuses. Sam Altman says Meta dangled nine-figure packages to pry OpenAI researchers - proof that elite AI talent now prices like star athletes.
  • Meta’s $14 B Scale AI bet. Less than a week later, Meta wrote its biggest external check yet to secure premium training data pipelines.
  • Mary Meeker’s “unprecedented” deck. Her 340-page AI Trends report shows ChatGPT reaching 400 M users faster than any prior platform. Unprecedented is used 53 times in the deck - this is how incredible the speed and impact of AI is.
  • Coatue’s EMW keynote. Enterprise AI spend is tracking >50 % CAGR through 2030—even in a flattening macro.
  • OpenAI’s consumer flywheel. The company just crossed $10B ARR, with 500 M weekly actives and 3M paying businesses.
  • Podcast pulse. All-In’s latest episode and Kevin Weil BG² conversation both land on the same takeaway: capital, compute, and people are compressing timelines from decades to quarters.

Take-away: Hype cycles usually overshoot reality; this time reality is sprinting ahead of the hype.

2 | Systems: Crossing the Corporate Chasm & the Talent Equation

Enterprise AI is hitting its messy middle. Meta’s talent arms-race (nine-figure offers and a $14 B Scale AI stake) collides with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s warning that GenAI will shrink parts of the corporate workforce—while Microsoft pre-funds an $80 B AI-infra binge by trimming thousands more roles next month. The real bottleneck isn’t capital or compute; it’s re-skilling people fast enough to wield both.

My contrarian stance:

  • Re-skill beats recession. Winners won’t merely cut heads; they’ll upgrade every seat to “AI-first professional” status.
  • Smaller org chart, bigger output. One deeply tooled product manager can now ship what ten did a decade ago.
  • Bifurcation ahead. Talent will split into those who orchestrate LLM workflows and those automated away.

Take-away: Competitive distance over the next 24 months will be set by how fast you can upskill the talent you keep—every seat you transform into “AI-first” compounds output, while every seat you leave behind compounds risk.

3 | Operator’s Radar

What caught my eye last week as good listens, reads, and thought-provoking pieces:

4 | Coming Up

Operating at Altitude: How Leaders Scale Decision Velocity — why data visibility + explicit intent beat hierarchy.

Onwards.

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