AI: How strategy will change with the usage of AI and what founders should consider

• According to reports, roughly 8 in 10 companies are already using AI, but fewer than 1 in 10 are truly AI-native.  What does this mean?

• If 90% are already using AI, the real question is, what are you doing differently? 

In this article, we will understand that the advantage no longer lies in adopting AI, but in how deeply and effectively you build around it. 

The ongoing 2026 Iran, US and Israel conflict is quoted as the “The first AI war” in which AI acted not just as a support but a partner in core strategy, targeting, and execution. In the 2024 global election cycle (in India and the US), AI tools were used for the hyper-personalized voter messaging. Oscar winning movie ‘The Brutalist’ even used AI tools for its accent correction and dialogue refinement in the post-production. DeepMind’s ‘AlphaFold’ advancements in the last 2 years have continued influencing the pharma sector. In retail and ecommerce, Amazon took AI into consideration for demand forecasting and supply chain planning. 

The list goes on and shows that across sectors, AI is moving from execution to decision-making.

AI is no longer just a support tool that exists on the sidelines; in the last 1 year specifically, it has become a core decision-making enabler that identifies and standardizes how strategies are built and executed. 

AI Value Paradox

It's simple, AI suggests and we humans approve and improve! 

But, over the years, we have adapted AI in our systems but its impact is still lower than expected. Reason being, most companies still use it for only automating their daily tasks and are still not using it at the system level (strategy+workflows).

Most founders are only treating AI just as a tool layer, something to “add” in their present workflows, products, or marketing.

It's not 2023 anymore! 

In 2026, this framing is outdated and won’t work. 

We need to understand that AI doesn’t behave like past technology shifts. Let's understand that.

(Image alt-text: Showing AI shifting business strategy from execution-focused technology to decision intelligence with assisted thinking, instant creation, and real-time optimization 

Title: AI Strategy Shift: From Execution to Real-Time Decision Intelligence)

The shift is clear: Humans think, machines execute to machines co-think, co-create, and co-decide.

AI isn’t just a tool in the stack anymore. It has become a very crucial part of the decision layer. 

The question is no longer: How do we use AI?

The real question today is: What parts of our strategy break when intelligence becomes abundant and what replaces them?

AI isn’t the differentiator anymore, your system around it is. 

The Core Shift and Reality

Earlier, companies were struggling with: 

• Limited analytical bandwidth 

• Expensive content creation processes

• Slow iteration cycles 

• Human-dependent decision-making 

But, AI has removed and compressed all of them. Clearly, over the years, the access to intelligence has scaled but sadly, the value creation hasn’t.

According to the latest McKinsey & Company research, “~80% of companies are already using AI, yet roughly the same proportion report no meaningful impact on revenue or profit.” 

Source: McKinsey & Company 2025 report

This is the defining insight most founders in recent years are missing.

What’s actually happening:

1. AI is easy to adopt but hard to translate into value: Building demos, copilots, or content workflows has become easy but turning them into revenue growth, margin expansion and a strategic advantage is where most companies struggle. 

2. Bottleneck has shifted: Earlier, Intelligence was scarce hence execution was constrained. But, now, Intelligence is abundant and organizational design is the constraint. Companies that are getting real impact are not just automating tasks and reducing costs with AI. They are also redesigning workflows and rebuilding functions.

What Breaks and Becomes the New Moat

Rightly said, AI doesn’t just improve execution, it erodes the foundational advantages most companies were built on.

What breaks first: 

1. Speed is no longer the differentiator, a competitive edge. Everyone can now generate GTM plans, content, campaigns, etc.

2. The knowledge is open to all now. With tools like ChatGPT, everyone is an expert as far as you know the right prompting technique. 

3. An AI-enabled team of 5 can easily outperform a 20-person team with complete outsourced functions. Output is no longer tied to team size.

The new moat:

The underlying shift here is, as the execution is commoditized, advantage moves upstream: how you think, structure, and decide.

1. Proprietary context to your data. It is not just your stored raw data, it turns your internal knowledge, customer interactions, and past decisions into structured inputs. The AI systems trained in this context produce more relevant, accurate, and defensible outputs than generic models anyone can access.

2. Building a compounding system with workflows. Moving from AI generation, human refinement, feedback loops and then continuous improvement. This is where the advantage lies. 

3. AI generates options for you to choose from. Founders can develop strong market judgment, positioning clarity and product intuition to become a core differentiator.

4. AI creates infinite content, but cannot guarantee attention, trust and reach. Hence, the distribution (owned channels, partnerships, networking) remains defensible. 

Model for AI-Native Companies

Needless to say, AI has compressed the cycle of strategy. Here’s what has changed in strategy:

1. Options are infinite. Hence there are no fixed plans and strategies anymore. Experimentation is the only roadmap. 

2. You no longer plan for quarters. Planning has shrunk to weeks now.  

3. No more feedback lags stopping the process with the real-time loops. 

Where founders get it wrong

1. Still treating AI as a cost saving tool and not as a growth multiplier. 

2. Over-automating process that leads to generic outputs. 

3. Focusing on AI tools and not building systems around the same. 

4. Ignoring data infrastructure that hampers AI effectiveness. 

(Image alt-text: AI strategy shift diagram showing transition from execution-focused technology to AI-driven decision-making and real-time cognition systems

Title: How AI is Changing Business Strategy: From Execution to Decision Intelligence)

The Real Shift

With AI, companies are now progressing from managing teams to designing systems. It's not about how much you have used AI or what tools you are using; it is about “How” you are using it by turning it into a compounding capability across workflows, decisions, and strategy. 

Identify those decision points where AI can support to improve speed, accuracy, and consistency (especially in workflows that impacts outcome)

Building a system where AI, humans, and data continuously improve each other is the key now!

Where 64 Grid Set Fits In

As shared, most founders don’t struggle with adopting AI. In our experience, they struggle is in:

• Converting it into a strategy

• Incorporating it in present systems.

• Turning it into a compounding advantage

The gap between “Using AI” and “Becoming AI-native” is where 64 Grid Set can help!

By helping you in designing  AI-enabled growth systems, building decision frameworks that scale, turning scattered tools into structured capabilities for optimum benefits and so much more.

Because when done right, it doesn’t look like a system with more tools, dashboards and automations. Rather, faster, better decisions, leaner teams with higher output and systems that improve with usage. 

In the shift, execution is not the bottleneck anymore; clarity, system design and strategy building are in which we can help. Back in 2023, it was about GenAI’s potential. Post 2025, it is about whether companies can rewire themselves fast enough to actually capture it.

If you’re also rethinking how AI can shape your brand strategy and not just your stack or have something more to share and seek; let’s start that conversation NOW!

CTA: <drop email> or you can direct user to website’s contact page 

(Also, at the end of the article, it's always better to add a little bio of the person who wrote it. This adds credibility to the piece.)

AI Usage Note: AI was used for bettering structure and doing research. All strategic frameworks and arguments are written by me. Used Canva AI for infographic designs and graph to better engage with readers as no one likes reading long paragraphs only.  Also, the article is written by keeping SEO guideline in mind for better engagement. )