The Only Tailwind Is AI — Inside the CEO Business Barometer, with Paul Witkay
About this episode
Paul Witkay discusses the shifting mindset of CEOs regarding their companies and the role of AI in business.
CEOs are calmer about the world — and twice as worried about their own companies. Paul Witkay has been sitting in confidential rooms with chief executives through every cycle since the dot-com era. He’s the founder of the Alliance of Chief Executives and publishes a quarterly Business Barometer that tracks what CEOs are actually thinking across industries and around the world. In this conversation with Bill Gallagher, Paul walks through four quarters of data — and the picture is striking. After eighteen months of uncertainty that left CEOs frozen like deer in headlights, the mood shifted to action. Not because they found answers, but because they couldn’t afford to stay frozen. And sixteen times more respondents now say that twelve months from now, things will be even more unpredictable than today. Unpredictability isn’t a phase — it’s the new constant. They dig into the inside-outside paradox, where CEOs are getting less negative about the global economy but more pessimistic about their own businesses. Paul shares the AI data — the only indicator that showed as a tailwind in a sea of headwinds. Sixty-one percent of CEOs are now building AI agents in-house, fifty percent have AI…
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