How talent can meet the massive AI investment moment

Yes, this is another story about AI. But this one’s fun, because it’’s not about robots replacing humans…at least not entirely.

A new global technology report from Bain & Co. said that “funding AI’s insatiable compute demand would require $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 and much of the value lies in innovation—beyond employee productivity.”

“AI infrastructure investment is racing ahead, but generating enough economic value to justify it will require trillions of dollars in new AI-driven revenue,” according to Bain’s 7th Annual Global Technology Report.

Deepali Vyas, global head of data and AI executive search at ZRG Partners, told CFO Brew the mass investment in AI over the next few years will include hiring talent, because there are still ultimately some things that can’t be automated.

“Companies want to hire in AI,” she said. “What [enterprises] are saying is, ‘Let’s get the best and brightest minds that understand AI more holistically, because we want them to evangelize the firm, the enterprise, as well.’”

Who to hire. CFOs, as the executives taking accountability for major AI investments in the business, shouldn’t neglect the new need Bain pointed out for revenue acceleration, Vyas said. “CFOs should be asking, ‘What can we sell now that we couldn’t sell before? Which customers can we serve profitably that were previously maybe too expensive to reach?’”

As a result, “from an executive search perspective…you want to have technologists who have commercial DNA. They can’t just be obsessed about the technology…[They] have to have the commercial DNA to be like, ‘How am I going to tie this to the actual pricing and margins?’ because technical depth matters, but [so does] knowing how to turn a capability into a business,” she said.

The most in-demand roles, Vyas said, are now in agent management (a new entry-level role), AI forward deployed engineer, and AI product management.

Forward deployed engineers are the hottest role right now, she said. “If you have a domain that you’re an expert in, you are going to apply AI to those workflows in that particular domain, you’re an AI forward deployment engineer.”

And because the number of people who understand AI at a deep enough level to execute those functions is “such a concentrated group,” Vyas said, “that we really need to unlock the potential of the everyday person utilizing AI.”

“That very small bucket of people that are AI[-native] are getting a premium, but I think everybody that jumps on this red-pill AI train will—I’m telling you—will be worth [a] 20% to 30% premium in their career economic value, if they do that, at a minimum, because AI fluency is like table stakes now,” she added.

Human elements. Bain’s report also said AI will need to provide value beyond simply boosting productivity—and “dramatic innovation will be required to deliver the revenue necessary to fund the gap.”

But innovations will also require human labor, Vyas said. Recently, the founder of a “multi-multi-multibillion-dollar private equity firm” reached out to her looking for “a chief of staff who is an AI native.”

“Imagine this job being a young person chief of staff to a co-founder. He’s a billionaire, and they’ll be in that role for 18 months to maybe three years, and then they’ll probably find some operational role across the fund, because they’ll get to know everything that this person is seeing,” Vyas said.

“Imagine trying to reverse engineer this billionaire’s brain via AI. With all the AI workflows that this person’s going to be creating, or AI tools for productivity or efficiency or whatever he wants, but then also applying it because [the founder’s] going to probably think, ‘Hey, if you can do it for me, then can we do it for our investments?’”