LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman's blunt message to managers leading their company's AI strategy: Your approach is probably outdated, because ...

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and has now delivered a blunt message to executives at the Semafor World Economy Summit: if you’re leading your company’s AI strategy, chances are your approach is already outdated. According to a report by Business Insider, Hoffman has also criticised the tendency of manages to o treat AI adoption like a conventional software rollout — starting with small pilot teams, polishing proofs of concept, and then scaling cautiously. Instead, he argued, companies should be experimenting rapidly across every area of the business.“What you want is people who are using AI tokens to be explaining how it is that they’re actually exploring things that are useful to the company,” Hoffman said.Speaking at the event, Hoffman outlined a practical method: establish a weekly check-in where teams share what new AI tools they tried, how they applied them to personal or group productivity, and what they learned. This, he said, keeps experimentation continuous and prevents organizations from falling behind.The comments made by Hoffman highlight a growing divide in Silicon Valley. Some leaders, like Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, have made AI use a baseline expectation, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has encouraged engineers to spend heavily on AI tokens. Others, such as investor Chamath Palihapitiya, are urging startups to rein in spending after monthly AI bills skyrocketed.Hoffman positioned himself in the middle: urging aggressive adoption but cautioning against blind faith in AI’s capabilities. For example, he said he does not trust current models for financial decisions, dismissing their investing advice as “business school mediocre.”Recently, Hoffman claimed that AI is enabling smaller teams to compete with much larger workforces. In a recent podcast, he argued that companies should reconsider traditional organisational structures in the AI era. In a recent episode of the "Possible" podcast, Hoffman said, "15 people with AI can compete with 150 without it. AI fundamentally changes what small teams can accomplish. Small teams have clearer shared context, something large organisations can't replicate. AI amplifies this because you can build systems that capture and surface patterns across that shared context.”Hoffman said that instead of seeking existing AI products to solve a specific issue, AI-native startups ask, "What would the perfect solution look like for my exact situation? Then they build it, even if crude.”