Successful AI Adoption Creates a Second Rollout Companies Rarely Plan For

About three years ago, I bought my first paid AI subscription and kicked off testing what it could actually do for me. Gradually, what began as personal experimentation turned into a small internal project, then company-wide business subscriptions and, eventually, an AI rollout spanning almost every department — development, finance, legal, marketing and support. The first phase, basically, worked.

Our internal development speed increased roughly fivefold within about six months. At the same time, another number rose: our AI spending increased about 15 times. That was when I understood that successful AI adoption could create problems of its own. Once the technology was widely used, the rules we started with no longer worked. Costs could get out of hand as AI was getting access to more company data and absorbing more tasks, while many of the tools themselves were still controlled by outside providers.

So, what should a CEO do when AI adoption works, but the company is not fully in control of how it is being used anymore? Let’s try to answer that. What I noticed right away was…