The Morning Download: The Road from CIO to CEO

What's up: AI, layoffs hit white-collar workers; Amazon is in talks to invest $10 billion or more in OpenAI; Google's AI wants to own your morning

Good morning. Jim Siders stepped down Monday as CIO of analytics giant Palantir to become chief executive of Shield Technology Partners, which wants to modernize the IT managed services industry that serves small- and mid-sized businesses.

Siders is one of few CIOs to make the leap to CEO. I spoke to him this week about how and why he made that transition, and how he thinks about leadership from the perspective of both roles.

First, though, what is Shield? The company says the idea is to help small and medium-sized companies grow faster by providing them with enterprise-level AI, product and engineering capabilities as well as operational and M&A expertise. Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners invested $100 million into the company, which is making acquisitions. “We're planning to close 2025 with about $100 million in revenue this year,” Siders said.

The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Belle Lin reported on the company in June.

Thrive Holdings was created last year by Thrive Capital, which was founded by Josh Kushner about 15 years ago and is known for investments in OpenAI, Databricks and Wiz, which Google has agreed to buy for $32 billion. 

Shield looks to continue that success by bringing new levels of technology and expertise to IT services companies, also called managed services providers, that provide IT support and manage tools like software and cloud-computing on behalf of businesses.

Shield wants to buy top-tier MSPs across the U.S. and build them up, while allowing them to maintain their own brand and identity. It’s a hybrid approach that combines elements of a financial-sponsored rollup with a tech startup, according to Siders. "We plan to leave these businesses in place with their current brand, but just doing way better,” he told me.

Read on below for edited highlights from Sider’s reflections on how he views leadership after various roles that have included CIO and now CEO. 

WSJLI: Jim, how has your experience as a CIO prepared you for this role as CEO?

Siders: I think being CIO, especially being the type of CIO that's an actual practitioner and hands-on leader, actually prepares you really well for this kind of a role. You end up being in the weeds across all of the functions of a business. You get a bunch of reps with a bunch of different types of stakeholders. You see things done well and poorly, and you get to develop a lot of good product taste and a lot of opinions about how to solve problems in the field. In this specific case, with Shield, I don't think we want to do exactly a rollup. We don't want to do exactly a normal tech company and it's certainly not like a corporate IT department. It's sort of a hybrid, a fusion of all of those. And so somebody like a CIO especially from my background, having been an operator and being in a pretty unconventional company like Palantir, I think it makes me a bit of an outsider, but also resonant, and a bit of a fellow traveler with all of those concepts.

WSJLI: How has the role of the CIO evolved over the last few years?

Siders: The CIO role is seeing a moment where the discipline of IT is revisiting its roots. IT teams started as "the computer department" which provided a massive, game-changing accelerant that upended a lot of established processes and norms as entire organizations shifted onto a new platform. Over the next few decades, many aspects of IT became a lot more esoteric; game-changing wins became quite subtle to an outside observer. Like the finer points of driving incremental ROI by automating small parts of a go-to-market function.

But now with the rise of AI, many IT departments and IT leaders are wrestling with profound and basic questions again for the first time in a generation, like: what does it mean to make workers more productive and impactful? What role should technologists and engineers play in guiding forward progress for a business? How do we prove whether a bet has paid off? These are existential questions for companies, and many IT leaders are finding their opinions on basic user enablement and productivity highly in demand again.

WSJLI: How must the skill-set of CIOs, CEOs and other leaders evolve in step with AI?

Siders: In response to the transformative potential of AI, IT leaders are re-engaging with the fundamentals of their role from first principles. CIOs who may have previously delegated basic security, tech support, and productivity deep into their org are taking a personal interest in these basic areas again. They are also seeing these issues rise to the top of the pile of strategic priorities for companies, and are now accountable within the company for owning productivity and measurable upside for workers in a more focused way.

This means the traditional practitioner-leader may have among the sharpest ideas for applying new technology to power a company's work, and because of the breadth and depth of the IT org's responsibilities, their vision is likely informed by a deep understanding of the mechanics of the company. In many cases, CIOs have also built relationships with boards, investors, etc... This makes for a strong "builder" CEO, at a moment when winning with AI requires a practitioner's deep knowledge.

— Steven Rosenbush

Tuesday’s jobs report was the latest ominous sign in an era of big corporate layoff announcements and CEOs warning that AI will replace workers as the overall unemployment rate ticked up to 4.6%.

Job openings in some white-collar industries are well below where they were right before the pandemic, according to Indeed. In mid-December, software-development jobs stood at 68% of their February 2020 level.

White-collar workers increasingly pessimistic, says WSJ. Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher put the average probability of losing their jobs in the next year at 15%, up from 11% three years ago, according to November data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

Big players this week continued to converge on the same goal: Seeding their AI tool updates into daily processes, from image creation to checking email. 

OpenAI is rolling out an upgraded ChatGPT Images tool that generates and edits images more precisely and up to four times faster, Bloomberg reports. The update adds a dedicated image-creation section and supports complex edits while preserving details like lighting, composition, and appearance, OpenAI said.

Google's AI wants to own your morning. The company this week debuted an AI productivity agent called CC built with Gemini that connects to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and the web to deliver a daily “Your Day Ahead” email summary.

Amazon is in talks to invest $10 billion or more in OpenAI, the Information reported Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the discussions. As part of the deal being discussed, OpenAI plans to use Trainium chips, two of the people said.

Blackstone is leading a $400 million investment in data-security firm Cyera that values the New York-based company at $9 billion, WSJ reports. Cyera is among a crop of cybersecurity startups using artificial intelligence to protect companies from new security vulnerabilities introduced by AI.

Alphabet's Waymo is in talks to raise more than $15 billion at a valuation near $100 billion, Bloomberg reports.

California regulators have given Tesla 90 days to meet compliance after an administrative law judge found the company deceived consumers by falsely implying its cars could drive on their own.

Days after EU regulators levied a $140 million fine against X for breaching content rules, the U.S. trade chief on Tuesday warned of possible trade actions against the European Union if the bloc continues fining American technology companies. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in a post on X identified nine European firms that he said have enjoyed “expansive market access” in the U.S., including Spotify, Siemens, Accenture and others.

We are asking Morning Download readers to share some of the most important books they have read over the last year.

Nedda Cox, vice president of AI business disruption, Intuit
Imagination: A Manifesto
Ruha Benjamin (2024)

“While this book isn't specific to tech, it is very much relevant to how unleashing imagination is critical to shaping a better future with AI. The book challenges readers to define the true intention of the systems we design, urging us to broaden our visionary thinking and innovation in ways that can disrupt the status quo and create more just realities.”

Dr. Robert Blumofe, chief technology officer & EVP, Akamai
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
Doris Kearns Goodwin (2024)

"My favorite biographer/historian is Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book is her latest, and it covers the turbulent 60s – a story of progress made and opportunity squandered, but ultimately suffused with Doris’s infectious optimism and riveting story telling. This is also her most personal work, since she and her husband were right there in the thick of it all."

Have one to share? Let us know.

Warner Bros. Discovery recommended shareholders reject Paramount’s unsolicited all-cash bid for the company Wednesday, saying it believes Netflix’s proposal for its studios and HBO Max streaming service is still superior. (WSJ)

President Trump on Tuesday ordered a “total and complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers enterin