Assuaging the AI anxiety

Good morning, wonderful people. If you, like so many other people we know, are struggling with a bit of AI anxiety, we have a little bit of (maybe) reassuring news as we prepare for a week in which the big business story globally is likely to be the volatility of the AI industry.

US tech giants are rethinking their messaging about the jobs-apocalypse after spending more than a year warning that AI would wipe out white-collar work. OpenAI boss Sam Altman (reportedly currying favor with the Trump administration with an offer to hand the state a 5% stake in his outfit) now says the industry “underestimated how much we’re going to be able to keep people at the center of everything,” the WSJ reports. And the share of US CEOs expecting AI to drive big headcount cuts has fallen from c. 46% in January 2025 to 20% in May, an EY-Parthenon survey found.

Maybe CEOs “realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy,” as MIT economist David Autor suggests?

Duelling studies provide little clarity: A Ramp-Revelio Labs study of nearly 22k companies found the heaviest AI adopters grew headcount about 10% faster than comparable firms that didn’t adopt it, with entry-level roles up 12% at tech-forward firms. Goldman Sachs research counters that AI probably resulted in the loss of 16k or so net US jobs per month over the past year, concentrated among Gen Z and entry-level workers.

Why it matters: AI is an-ever-more-important player in the Gulf’s collective economic strategy — and this week is shaping up to be interesting. SpaceX, fresh off the world’s largest IPO, enters the Nasdaq 100 tomorrow — and chipmaker SK Hynix plans to raise USD 29 bn through an ADR sale on Friday. Traders have the jitters after Bloomberg reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta plans to sell excess GPU capacity as a product — news that sent AI cloud compute player CoreWeave’s shares off a cliff and caused South Korea’s Kospi to swoon. The checkpoint to watch right now: Samsung’s preliminary 2Q financials tomorrow.

Remember: Abu Dhabi’s MGX just raised a USD 49 bn AI investment fund (one of the largest-ever — it plans to invest up to USD 10 bn a year). –Patrick