Nathaniel Whittemore

They wrote, "...self-funding the next wave from past returns sounds like discipline."

In reality, it's a circular bet with a structural leak.

Now, some of the big issues that Bain found in terms of what was going wrong for AI deployments included 41% of companies saying that there were issues around data access or data integration, with more than 25% of respondents also flagging concerns including compliance issues, competing business priorities, and skills gaps.

Meanwhile, over at Walmart, the company is limiting their employees' use of AI tools after surging demand.

In the latest story showing the shift to the token shortage era, excess demand from employees has caused Walmart to end their unlimited token policy for their core agentic tool called CodePuppy.

CodePuppy is a co-work style agent useful for tasks beyond coding, including preparing presentations and working with spreadsheets.

Workers now have a token budget, although sources didn't indicate what the new token limit is.

Now, a Walmart spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company still wants its employees to use AI, but is now providing additional training to help people be more efficient in the way they use AI.

But expect to see a lot more of this end of unlimited token policy as agent exile use cases come online.

That's a story that we will continue to watch.

However, for now, that's going to do it for the headlines.

Next up, the main episode.

One of the most important AI questions right now isn't who's using AI, it's who's using it well.

KPMG and the University of Texas at Austin just analyzed 1.4 million real workplace AI interactions and found something surprising.

The highest impact users aren't better prompt engineers, they treat AI like a reasoning partner.

They frame problems, guide thinking, iterate, and push for better answers.

And the good news?

These behaviors are teachable at scale.

If you're trying to move from AI access to real capability, KPMG's research on sophisticated AI collaboration is worth your time.

Learn more at kpmg.com slash us slash sophisticated.