Three things happened this week that share a common thread.
Google’s Gemini can now handle multi-step tasks on Android autonomously. Order food, book a ride, coordinate logistics — no human confirmation needed. It’s in beta, limited to specific apps, but the direction is clear.
Anthropic acquired Vercept, a company built around AI perception and interaction. The goal: make Claude better at using computers the way a human would. Their Sonnet model went from under 15% on computer-use benchmarks in late 2024 to 72.5% today. That’s approaching human-level performance on tasks like navigating spreadsheets and filling in web forms across browser tabs.
And at Uber, employees have built an AI clone of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. They use “Dara AI“ to rehearse presentations before making them to the real Dara. The AI knows his preferences, decision-making patterns, and feedback style.
Each story is different. Together they describe the same shift: AI moving from “answers your questions“ to “takes actions on your behalf.“
I’ve been living with this shift for a few weeks. My AI assistant doesn’t just tell me about my calendar — it checks my email, flags what matters, monitors silver prices, scans for comets in space telescope data, and places trades on prediction markets. It works while I sleep. When I wake up, there’s a summary of what happened overnight.
The Uber story is the one that should interest anyone in corporate leadership. If employees can build an AI version of the CEO good enough to rehearse presentations with, what does that mean for how decisions flow through organisations? The CEO’s judgment — their preferences, their pattern-matching, their style — becomes scalable. You don’t need to get 30 minutes on Dara’s calendar to understand how he’ll react to your proposal. You ask his AI first.
For PE portfolio companies, the implications compound. Imagine an AI that embodies the investment committee’s decision framework. Every management team in the portfolio can pressure-test their proposals before the quarterly review. The quality of what reaches the IC goes up. The time spent on misaligned presentations goes down.
We’re not imagining this. It’s already happening at Uber.
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