To say there’s anxiety around what AI will mean for jobs is an understatement.
But there are nuanced ways to think about this and, according to the CEO of one company at the forefront of experimenting with AI, perhaps less to worry about than we might otherwise have thought.
“The good news is that there’s not a single job anywhere that AI can perform all of the skills required for that job,” Indeed CEO Chris Hyams told the audience at Coins2Day’s Workplace Innovation Summit in Dana Point, Calif. On Monday, describing the findings of Indeed’s labor economists. “It doesn’t mean it won’t replace workers, but AI can’t completely replace a job.”
Simultaneously, Indeed’s findings have also shown that “for about two-thirds of all jobs, 50% or more of those skills are things that today’s generative AI can do reasonably well, or very well.”
These two seemingly at-odds findings point to a seismic shift underway—not a simple scenario where entire sectors vanish overnight, but a far more complex transformation where jobs are undeniably evolving.
“What that says is that pretty much every job is going to change if it’s not changing already,” Hyams said onstage. “It’s going to happen rapidly. I’m personally expecting—I’ve been doing this for a little over 30 years—that if you look at the change that’s happened because of the internet to pretty much every line of work, there are a handful of occupations over the next three years that will see 30 years of change. So, what we’re seeing is that people are going to have to adapt very, very quickly to how they work, but also how they hire and how they find jobs.”
Julia Villagra, OpenAI Chief People Officer, shares Hyams’s belief that a lot is about to change.
“I think one of the things that we need to do at this moment is actually to start changing the way we talk about job replacement,” Villagra told the audience. “I think this is really about something bigger than that. It’s about a reimagination of jobs. It’s about redistribution of how we work. And as a people person and an optimist, I have a lot of faith and optimism about how humans throughout history have actually adapted and leveraged technology for progress.”
“At the end of the day, if there’s one thing I do want to communicate, it’s that the best answer to fear and anxiety is actually knowledge and understanding,” Villagra added. “So, that’s why it’s so critical that companies put this technology in the hands of employees.”
Indeed’s Hyams feels strongly that AI adoption can’t come from top-down mandates, and instead is best served by grassroots enthusiasm. His advice to companies looking to double-down on AI adoption: Find internal champions excited about AI, and let them demonstrate practical benefits to colleagues.
“Finding the champions, giving people a chance to figure out what works for them, and then letting them be the spokespeople—that has been so much more effective for us,” said Hyams.
Hyams shaded Marc Andreessen’s recent comments about VC being the last job left after AI reaches maturity.
“I may be in the minority, but I disagree with the concept of fewer people in the workforce,” he said. “I know that’s a very popular opinion. There’s some very important people in this world saying that the only job left at the end of all will be venture capitalist—it was a venture capitalist who said that.”
Hyams is ultimately comfortable with the embedded contradiction of talking about AI and how it will change labor.
“I think we’re going to go through a period for the next couple of years where people are looking for ways to cut costs, with the economy being as volatile and unpredictable as it is right now,” he said. “So, we’re going to see jobs slowing down, hiring slowing down. And I think we’re going to find just what we have with every other type of technological advancement of the last 400 years—that we’re going to be able to do so much more.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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VENTURE DEALS
- Awardco, a Lindon, Utah-based employee recognition and rewards platform, raised $165 million in Series B funding at a $1 billion valuation from Sixth Street Growth, Spectrum Equity, and existing investors General Catalyst and Ryan Smith.
- Sprinter Health, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based mobile healthcare services provider, raised $55 million in Series B funding. General Catalyst led the round and was joined by existing investors a16z Bio + Health, the Regents of the University of California, Google Ventures, and Accel.
- Miter, a San Francisco-based human capital management, field operations, and expense management platform, raised $23 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Coatue Management.
- Biostate AI, a Houston-based GenAI developer for disease and drug response prediction, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round and was joined by Gaingels, Mana Ventures, InfoEdge Ventures, existing investors Matter Venture Partners, Vision Plus Capital, and Catapult Ventures, and angel investors.
- AskElephant, a Draper, Utah-based AI-powered orchestration platform for customer-facing teams, raised $6 million in seed funding. Jump Capital led the round and was joined by High Alpha, Tandem, SaaS Ventures, and others.
- Button Finance, a New York City-based home equity lending fintech, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Hildene Capital Management led the round and was joined by existing investors.
- Pronto, a Gurgaon, India-based house help services provider, raised $2 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures.
- ThriveAI, a San Francisco-based AI-powered junior product manager, raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. 500 Global led the round and was joined by Iterative and Hustle Fund.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Apax Partners agreed to acquire the treasury and capital markets business unit of Finastra, a London-based financial services software provider backed by Vista Equity Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Dental Holding, backed by Abris Capital Partners, acquired Sanitaria Dental, a Zagreb, Croatia-based dental supplies distributor; SCL Logistika, a Zagreb, Croatia-based dental and medical fulfillment and logistics services provider; and Sanitaria, a Budapest-based dental implants, equipment, and consumables distributor. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Energize Capital acquired a majority stake in 5, an Irving, Texas-based energy advisory firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Morae, a portfolio company of Lateral Investment Management, acquired Gimmal, a Houston-based information governance software platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Recurly, backed by Accel-KKR, acquired Prive, a San Francisco-based Shopify subscription platform company, and Redfast, a Cupertino, Calif.-based subscriber engagement solution. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Renaissance Partners and TPG Rise Climate agreed to acquire a majority stake in SICIT Group, a Chiampo, Italy-based sustainable agricultural products company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- TriPost Capital Partners acquired a minority stake in Veleta Capital, a Los Angeles-based real estate private credit platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
- Charter Communications, a Stamford, Conn.-based cable company, agreed to merge with Cox Communications, an Atlanta-based cable company, at at an enterprise value of approximately $34.5 billion.
- Prosus acquired Despegar, a Buenos Aires-based online travel agency for Latin America, for $1.7 billion.
- Tripledot Studios acquired the mobile games studio portfolio of AppLovin, a Palo Alto-based audience growth and monetization technology developer, and a minority stake in the company for approximately $800 million, half cash and half equity.
- Robinhood Markets agreed to acquire WonderFi, a Toronto-based centralized and decentralized crypto company, at an equity value of approximately $250 million CAD ($179 million) in cash.
- Life360 invested $25 million in Aura, a Boston-based AI-powered online safety solution.
- Databricks agreed to acquire Neon, a San Francisco-based serverless Postgres platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Huma acquired Aluna, a San Francisco-based lung health monitoring technology company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- JumpCloud acquired VaultOne, a Houston-based privileged access management solutions provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Procore Technologies acquired Novorender, a Stavanger, Norway-based 3D-model viewer and Building Information Modeling platform, and FlyPaper, a Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.-based construction software company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Team Vitality acquired Bigetron Esports, a Jakarta, Indonesia-based esports company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- QuantumLight, a London-based venture capital firm, raised $250 million for its first fund focused on AI, Web3, fintech, SaaS and healthtech companies.
PEOPLE
- EnCap Flatrock Midstream, a San Antonio-based venture capital firm, promoted Matthew Melton to managing director and Ian Morris to vice president.
