[
- In today’s CEO Daily: Peter Vanham on the importance of AI for CEOs.
- The big story: Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly declines White House invitation.
- The markets: Very happy about Trump’s EU tariff delay.
- Analyst notes from Deutsche Bank on rising bond yields; Convera on the U.S. dollar’s woes; and Goldman Sachs on tariff-related inflation.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Peter Vanham writing from Geneva this morning. Could it be that for all the AI hype we’ve already had, some CEOs still haven’t understood how important it is to implement it across their organization, and how little time there is left to do so?
Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund, certainly seems to feel that way. After speaking with CEO Daily earlier this month he asked if we could chat again, this time specifically about AI. As a leading investor in many Global Fortune 500 companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet and Amazon, he explained that he’s starting to see disparities between AI leaders and laggards grow by the day.
“AI is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I have never seen a period where a company can pull apart from competition by like 20% in one year. It’s totally unheard of,” he said, hailing SAP, the German software company that recently overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company, as a case in point.
But those gains don’t come for free, he also warned. To reap them, you need to be serious about it in every part of the organization, starting at the top. And it’s here he is still often frustrated. “If the leader is not relentless about it,” Tangen said, “it won’t happen.”
Similarly, he said, you need “young, tech-savvy” ambassadors who experiment with AI at the base of your organization (and are given appropriate tools to do so); and middle management and compliance departments that act as enablers, rather than actors who stand in the way.
“Companies are turned upside down”, he said. “You see change coming from newly recruited people. In the past, middle managers had to disseminate information from the top. Now [their job] is to pull information from under, and make sure it goes up.”
In an environment where AI is everywhere, including in productivity figures, the time for laggards to catch up is running out. Tangen’s advice? “You just need to implement AI in everything you can. […] People don’t like change. You need to force them.”
At the Norwegian State Investment Fund (NBIM) itself, AI-induced change is well underway, and communicated regularly via Town Halls where use cases are disseminated. And earlier this month, Tangen announced a hiring freeze as a result of its AI productivity gains.
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-2216698341-e1748338945129.jpg?resize=1200,600
https://fortune.com/2025/05/27/nicolai-tangen-ceos-understand-important-to-implement-ai-little-time-left/
Diane Brady
