A tech company has ambitious goals and tells its employees they should be ready for some hardcore work.
No, I’m not talking about Amazon. Or Nvidia. Or Tesla.
This time around, it’s Tools for Humanity, Sam Altman’s $2.5 billion eye-scanning startup that wants to help prove people’s humanity in the age of AI.
“We will neither fail, nor will we be an average outcome, and that’s what we want and that’s all I care about every day and all you should care about every day, and nothing else should matter,” CEO Alex Blania told employees at the start of the year, according to a recording reviewed by BI’s Nicole Einbinder.
Blania’s message has become a common pitch from tech executives to their employees ahead of critical junctures.
For Orb, it’s about getting more people to opt into what amounts to a human verification tool.
Tools for Humanity has amassed millions of sign-ups, but Nicole previously reported it’s still well shy of its goal of a billion users. Insiders questioned its long-term strategy, especially in a crowded marketplace for payment and identification products.
And then there’s the regulatory angle. Some countries, like Spain, India, and Indonesia, have either barred, halted, or investigated the startup.
Not one to get left out of the fun, Microsoft is in the middle of a “rethink.”
CEO Satya Nadella said the tech giant needs to adjust its business model for the AI era, and he’s tapping an advisor to help.
BI’s Ashley Stewart obtained an internal memo from Nadella that explained how the company needs to “rapidly rethink the new economics of AI across the company — just as we once did with the cloud.”
For both Tools for Humanity and Microsoft, AI sits at the core of their strategy decisions. As much as the tech has caused anxiety and fear among workers about their future, the companies looking to leverage it are also facing plenty of uncertainty.
That’s a difficult proposition for employees: Trust your company as it wades into the unknown despite not having a ton of job security yourself.
But with an unrelenting job market, workers might not have another choice.
