The AI companies that want to replace us
…and how to become irreplaceable. A deep dive on the companies who want to augment and replace traditional workers. Insights from the world’s top tech CEOs.
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“Am I replaceable?” is a question that’s currently in the back (and front) of a lot of tech workers minds. In a recent roundtable discussion, Replit’s CEO warned that if your job involves sitting in front of a computer and clicking on a few things to produce an image or text artifact, your job is at risk. But as the CEO of a tech company whose main value proposition is replacing or augmenting software engineers, you could argue that he was always going to say that.
On the other hand, he may be right. This week, a new startup bagged $1.2 million in funding to build what it describes as the world’s first “Junior AI product manager” and Microsoft confirmed that it was cutting ~6000 jobs, some which were designed to reduce the “PM ratio” to engineers.
In this DoP Deep dive, we’re going to take a closer look at the companies who are trying to augment or replace human workers with AI. We’ll explore what they do, how they work and their potential impact on product teams. We’ll also consider what it might take to become irreplaceable and thrive in the AI-disrupted workplace in 2025 with a curated selection of insights and opinions from top tech CEOs from companies including Figma, Nvidia, Microsoft and more.
Coming up:
Analysis of the new AI employee companies that are seeking to augment and replace workers including Ema, Thrive and others
The company that raised $25m with subway ads literally telling humans they'll be replaced
How each of these new companies could impact product team roles including product management, design and engineering
How to become irreplaceable - what tech leaders say are the essential skills to stay relevant and employable in 2025 - insights and opinions from the CEOs at Microsoft, Nvidia, Figma and more
Analysis of the AI companies that are seeking to augment and replace us
Here’s a sample of some of the companies included in this analysis:
For each company included you’ll get a breakdown of:
The company - these companies are either directly or indirectly pitching themselves as companies to augment or replace employees.
What it does - a summary of the core value proposition and how it seeks to augment or replace employees. Ema is a startup that pitches itself a “Universal Employee” that can work across various use cases including data analysis, sales, marketing and more.
Funding raised to date - where applicable, the funding raised to date to give you a sense of how large the company is.
Impact on product teams - how this company might impact product teams, including product managers, engineers and designers. For example, ThriveAI is positioned as a tool that frees senior PMs from administrative tasks, enabling focus on creative and strategic work.
Links to more information - more information about the company.
Plus… insights on how to be irreplaceable and stay relevant
As well as this, you’ll get perspectives from world leaders on how they think employees might be able to make themselves irreplaceable in 2025 and beyond. Insights from top CEOs including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Figma’s Dylan Field will include their recommendations on:
How to stay relevant in the AI age
What skill sets are likely to be in demand once AI can handle most of our repetitive, procedural work
The difference between specialists and generalists and how AI impacts those career paths
Thrive AI - the junior AI product manager
Let’s start with the company that says it can replace junior product managers with AI. I signed up for an account to see how it works and we’ll take a look at some of the functionality together shortly to assess whether it may indeed live up to its promises.
But first, here’s a few slides from their pitch deck that was used to raise $1.2 seed funding, explaining their value proposition and the problems they solve: