Facts, not forecasts: three lessons from sharing perspectives on AI

In the era of AI, connecting with people matters more than ever. With this in mind, we brought together an exclusive group of senior leaders, executives, and experts for a Brillian AI Lunch in the Tampere region. This gathering created a space for candid conversations about what is actually happening right nowand what it means for companies that make and sell real things.

Leadership teams need to pay attention to the changes

Brillian’s CTO and Co-founder Tarmo Pajunen advises leadership teams and boards at the intersection of strategy, technology and AI. At the lunch event, Tarmo wanted us to focus on things that are already happening in the world due to AI. He pointed out these facts:

• Roughly 60% of website traffic now comes from AI agents and bots acting for their users, not from people. That tipping point arrived months earlier than predicted. (TechTimes, 2026)
• Anthropic's annualized revenue grew from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to around $65 billion by June 2026. In one quarter it added roughly a Nokia's worth of yearly revenue. (TechCrunch, 2026)
• The size of task an AI model can complete now doubles every 3,5 months, down from 7 months.* (METR, 2026; Read the Oom, 2026)
• Stack Overflow, for years the place developers went for answers, saw only around 1,400 posts over the summer. At its peak it handled more than 200,000 posts per month. (Stack Overflow, 2026)

The gap between companies is widening

There is evidence both through our work with our clients, as well as from various sources, that everyone is spending more on AI, while the difference between the top 1% as well as the median is staggering. According to Ramp AI Index (2026), leading companies spend around $7,400 per person per month on AI usage. The same source states average company spends about $12.

While measuring the outcomes of AI investments is still a challenging task, the gap on the investments says something about intent: some companies see AI is a key element of their competitive edge, and thus as a way they will stay relevant in the future.

Three things that actually move the needle

In his keynote, Tarmo closed with what we have learned from the past year of client work:

1. Start with the leadership. Every company moves at its own pace, and targets should reflect that. Understand your own capacity for change, build capabilities, and keep looking for the breakthroughs.
2. Make room to start from zero. Nobody resets a hundred-year-old company. But carve out a small space to ask: how would we run this process if we designed it today, ignoring current tools? We have seen this technique help clients unlock novel thinking and we truly believe this is where the leaps happen.
3. Knowledge is more than data. Dashboards and documents are not enough: companies need a shared context that ties data to its rules, goals and meaning. Building the knowledge layer is the first step, after which choosing or swapping your AI vendor becomes almost trivial. Building the layer, however, it is not trivial, and that is exactly where to invest.
   
   

So what now?

If the pace of the last twelve months continues for the next twelve, what should you be doing differently today? That was the question we left the table with, and it is the one we keep working on with our clients.

Want to continue the conversation? Book a time to discuss. 

*METR measures the length of software tasks (in human-expert time) that AI agents can complete autonomously. The doubling time has roughly halved: 7 months is METR's 2019–2025 average; its own 2024+ fit is ~3 months, Read the OOM rounds to 3.5. Caveat: well-specified tasks, not messy real jobs – but the direction is clear.

Sources:

METR, 2026. METR Time Horizon 1.1 (Jan 2026); 3.5 mo as rounded by Read the OOM (METR’s own 2024+ fit: ~3 mo) Read the OOM – METR time horizons

Ramp AI Index, 2026. Ramp AI Index – August 2026

Stack Overflow, 2026. PPC Land – Stack Overflow, July 2026.

TechCrunch, 2026. TechCrunch – Anthropic $65B run rate.

Techtimes, 2026. TechTimes – Cloudflare bot traffic, June 2026.