In the last year, AI-native companies such as Anthropic, Databricks, Jasper AI, and OpenAI have quietly been rewriting the rules of business. A nine-person firm reached $10 million in annual revenue in just two years. Another posted $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 12 months, with a team small enough to fit around a boardroom table. These aren’t outliers—they’re early indicators of a profound shift.

You’ve heard of digital-first. You’ve heard of tech-enabled. But AI-first?

It’s more than a buzzword. It’s a fundamentally different way of organizing people, resources, and decisions around the capabilities of artificial intelligence. And companies that get this right aren’t just getting faster. They’re getting fundamentally better.

So, what is an AI-first company, exactly?

AI Becomes Your Central Nervous System

Many companies today are “AI-interested.” They’re running pilots, dabbling with chatbots, issuing executive memos on experimentation. But these efforts are often bolted onto old ways of working.

An AI-first company doesn’t attach AI to an existing structure. It places AI at its core and builds from it, using AI as the central nervous system of the organization.

In practice, that means rethinking how decisions are made, how workflows are designed, and how teams are structured. AI isn’t simply automating tasks—it’s doing the work, recommending the strategy, and triggering execution. The role of humans shifts accordingly—from task executors to AI collaborators, judgment-callers, sense-makers, and, when necessary, czar.