The McKinsey Podcast · Sep 24, 2026 · 24m · 14m saved
With Bret Taylor, Co-Founder and CEO of Sierra and Chair of OpenAI
One company using Sierra's AI agents has them resolve over 90% of its customer cases without a human, Bret Taylor said, which means its costs no longer grow with its business.
A company that cuts costs with AI might expect to hand the savings to shareholders. Taylor said that because every company now has access to the same AI, the savings will not stay with shareholders. Competitors will cut prices or reinvest, and adopting AI will become the minimum needed to compete.
"I think with the benefit of hindsight, adopting AI for these core corporate processes will be an imperative, not a competitive advantage."
Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra and chair of OpenAI, on The McKinsey Podcast, builds AI agents for many of the world's largest companies while overseeing the lab behind ChatGPT. He spoke with Eric Kutcher, McKinsey's North America chair.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 24 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
"We are in the foothills of artificial general intelligence," Taylor said, and AI working with information alone is probably already superintelligent
Cybersecurity is the most acute short-term risk, because AI can find thousands of flaws faster than companies can patch them
Every company's AI agent will become its "digital front door," he said
Open-weight models will always have a place, but frontier labs will keep a lasting cost advantage
The data center buildout does not yet generate the cash flow to justify it, Kutcher said, and Taylor agreed it is extremely high risk
AI companies have done "a fairly abysmal job" of explaining what AI and data centers do for ordinary people, Taylor said
With a shrinking US workforce, growth has to come from productivity, Kutcher said
1. The Foothills of AGI
Kutcher asked Taylor what excites and worries him about this moment.
AI now reasons and completes work on its own
Taylor said the current generation of AI has changed how people interact with technology. Because the models can reason, computers can work through ambiguous tasks and complete work autonomously. The first economic effects are in software engineering and in customer service and sales.
"We are in the foothills of artificial general intelligence." — Bret Taylor
Recent models have proved unproven math conjectures, or disproved some, he said.
"I think in the domain of information you know where digital technology is all that's required you know we are probably already at a point of having super intelligent AI" — Bret Taylor
Everyone will have access to a superintelligent financial adviser and the world's best primary care doctor, and every child to a personal tutor, he said. Over the next few years the digital parts of the economy will change dramatically while the rest will not, which will create complexity.
Cybersecurity is the near-term danger
As in the early days of the internet, industries are not yet equipped for the security effects of a new technology, he said.
"I think we're in a period of sort of societal vulnerability." — Bret Taylor
