A sweeping roadmap for business leaders in the AI age, when every organization must rethink how it operates, competes, and creates value-from AI legend and New York Times bestselling author of AI Superpowers and AI 2041 Kai-Fu Lee
Two years ago, the best AI agents could autonomously complete tasks that took a human expert roughly six minutes to complete. Today, top AI agents across nearly all white-collar industries can complete the workday of the smartest humans in less time than a coffee break-at a fraction of the cost.
What happens when the most expensive thing that companies buy-human thinking-becomes practically free?
This is the single most consequential question facing business leaders for a generation, and many are struggling with how to answer it. AI is not simply another technology cycle but a fundamental transformation in the economics of business. The answer is not to dabble. It is to become AI Native.
Kai-Fu Lee has spent the past four decades pioneering AI in business from nearly every vantage point: as a researcher, senior executive at Apple, Microsoft, and Google, and now a CEO himself. Few thinkers can match his combination of technical expertise and business acumen.
In AI Native, he draws from this deep well of experience to offer a radical new roadmap for company leaders to become AI Native. With punchy, insightful guidance, Lee dispels the lies CEOs are being told about AI, offers a clear roadmap for how to re-structure teams with powerful agentic AI at the center of the enterprise, and reveals the power and potential of using AI to tap into the hidden trove of knowledge inside companies. Those that get it right will flourish in the AI age.
AI Native is the only book leaders need to navigate the defining challenge of our time. "I hear the same question again and again from top executives: how do we turn AI pilots into real business results? Kai-Fu Lee answers that question with extraordinary clarity in AI Native: the key is not simply adopting new technology, but transforming the business itself-its workflows, decision rights, talent, data, and culture. This book is the operating manual for the largest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution."-Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford professor, co-author of best-selling The Second Machine Age, and co-founder of Workhelix
"Kai-Fu Lee is a world-class researcher who realized very early that neural networks were the future of AI. He is also a leading investor, and an accomplished business leader, so he speaks with great authority when he describes how companies should incorporate AI and how people can remain relevant."-Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"Even in the C-suite at some of the world's biggest companies, the AI revolution is underhyped. Finally, here's a book for leaders who sense AI's vast potential but need a roadmap. As Kai-Fu Lee argues with brilliance and clarity, the boring parts of the business-your company's accumulated trove of knowledge-is where the extraordinary value is hiding, and you can tap into it by adopting AI, adopting it fast, and adopting it right."-Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and bestselling author of The Age of AI
"Enterprises that integrate artificial intelligence thoughtfully will flourish; those that do not will fail. As an AI pioneer, executive, investor, and visionary, Kai-Fu Lee is exceptionally well positioned to cut through the noise and explain what this moment demands. AI Native is a clear, urgent, and practical guide to redesigning organizations around abundant intelligence, while preserving meaning, dignity, and human purpose."-Peter Brown, CEO, Renaissance Technologies
"Kai-Fu Lee has long been one of the clearest and most thoughtful voices on how AI is transforming business and society. In AI Native, he offers leaders a practical guide to reimagining how organizations work-and how
