Direct answer: Adopting artificial intelligence now is a competitive advantage because the technology gets cheaper and spreads fast — those who wait transfer the gain to competitors. Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and CEO of Microsoft AI, summarizes the thesis in "The Coming Wave": the AI wave is inevitable and fast, and the window to start is short.
Most companies treat artificial intelligence as a "next year" topic. Those who built the technology from within disagree. When it comes to when to adopt AI in the company, it’s worth hearing from the source: Mustafa Suleyman co-founded DeepMind in 2010, then Inflection AI, and since 2024 has led Microsoft AI as CEO. In the book The Coming Wave (2023), he sums up what he saw from inside the lab — and the conclusion has practical consequences for any business. We summarized the idea and translated what it means for your operation.
Update (Jun/2026): since 2024, Suleyman’s thesis has only grown stronger. The cost of using AI kept dropping and adoption in Brazilian operations became market standard, not an experiment — making the starting lesson more urgent, not less.
The central lesson: the wave is inevitable — and fast
The metaphor giving Suleyman’s book its name is a wave. Technologies that change everything — electricity, the combustion engine, the internet — don’t arrive slowly nor ask permission: they advance, become cheaper, spread, and become inevitable. Artificial intelligence, in his argument, is the next wave of this magnitude. The question that matters for managers isn’t "if" AI will reach their sector, but "when" — and who will be ready.
What separates this wave from earlier ones is speed. The computation capacity behind the models grew by orders of magnitude in a few years, and the cost of using AI drops every cycle. In practice, this means the early adoption advantage and the late adoption cost increase together: the window between "novelty" and "market standard" is shorter than any prior technology transition.
In field practice: the most common mistake we see is not adopting AI too early — it’s waiting for competitors to prove it first. By the time the proof arrives, the advantage has already changed sides. The wave rewards those who enter with a small, measurable process before the whole market does.
Why waiting became a risk, not prudence
For decades, "waiting to mature" was a reasonable strategy for new technology. Mustafa Suleyman’s view on artificial intelligence reverses this logic. When technology becomes cheaper and spreads exponentially, the company that waits does not avoid risk — it only transfers advantage to those who acted first.
Think about what this means daily. While one operation still debates if it is worth it, another in the same sector already responds to leads instantly, qualifies, and schedules 24/7. The cost of waiting doesn’t show on a budget line: it shows in leads that cooled off because no one responded at night, in hours the team spent on repetitive tasks, in service delays that lose to faster competitors.
This is where the thesis gains commercial translation. It's not about "having AI" as a trophy, but about placing it where response time turns into money — usually in WhatsApp support 24/7 and lead qualification with a AI-powered SDR. See which process in your company to automate first: the free assessment shows, in a few minutes, where the wave has already arrived and where you still have a starting advantage.
What we learned in operation: urgency only turns into results when it becomes focus. Trying to automate everything at once paralyzes; choosing the most repetitive and measurable bottleneck — almost always support and qualification — delivers quick returns and builds confidence for the next step.
Containing risks is not an excuse to freeze
It would be unfair to the source to reduce the book to a call for "run, adopt AI." Suleyman is both one of the greatest enthusiasts and one of the most candid about the risks. The central concept of The Coming Wave is containment: the idea of maintaining control, safety, and supervision over a powerful technology that tends to spread faster than the capacity to govern it.
For decision-makers in a company, the lesson is not AI geopolitics — it's the approach. Containment, translated to operations, means adopting responsibly: start with a clear scope, keep humans in command to review and correct, measure results, and expand based on data, not hype. Caution and speed are not opposites; well-executed caution is what allows you to accelerate safely.
In the field practice: the fear of "losing control" disappears when AI enters with a defined scope and human supervision. An Digital Employee who supports and qualifies on WhatsApp operates within clear rules, logs everything, and passes the case to the right person when it goes beyond limits — rapid adoption with the containment Suleyman himself advocates.
From the lab to your WhatsApp
Suleyman’s vision describes a future where every person and every company will have an AI working by their side, organizing, executing, and taking repetitive work off people’s backs. At XMACNA, this concept has a name and a concrete function: it is the Digital Employee — an AI agent that not only chats but executes an end-to-end process, integrated with the systems you already use, nonstop. There are already +600 Digital Employees in operation, with +25% in revenue across the main client operations — the same wave, already rolling.
Results show where the task is repetitive and response time matters. At Rede Supera, an education franchise network, the Digital Employee doubled scheduled visits — +100% compared to the network’s own control group — with +100% effective contacts (qualified leads). At Instituto Mix, lead capture jumped from 1 per 10 scheduled visit contacts to 6 per 10 — real, auditable data in the Intelligent Dashboard.
This is not the distant future Suleyman describes: it’s the same wave, already running in Brazilian operations today. The difference between reading about the wave and surfing it is just starting.
In summary: Suleyman’s practical lesson
- The AI wave is inevitable and fast — the question is "when," not "if."
- Waiting became a risk: technology becomes cheaper and spreads quickly, and the advantage goes to those who act first.
- Containment is not freezing — it’s adopting with clear scope, human command, and measurement.
- Applied to business, this is XMACNA’s Digital Employee: supports, qualifies, and solves on your WhatsApp — there are already +600 in operation, with +25% in revenue across main client operations.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Mustafa Suleyman?
Mustafa Suleyman is co-founder of DeepMind (2010), co-founder of Inflection AI, and since 2024, CEO of Microsoft AI. He is also author of the book "The Coming Wave" (2023), about the impact and risks of the next wave of technology, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology.
What is the main lesson of "The Coming Wave" for companies?
That the AI wave is inevitable and advancing exponentially. For managers, the practical lesson is that preparing the company now is a competitive advantage, while waiting transfers this advantage to early adopters. Caution and speed go hand in hand.
What does Mustafa Suleyman mean by "containment"?
Containment is maintaining control, safety, and human supervision over a powerful technology that tends to spread fast. Translated for companies: adopt AI with clear scope, humans in command to review and correct, and expansion based on measured results — not hype.
Why is waiting to adopt AI a risk?
Because AI gets cheaper and spreads fast. While one operation debates whether it’s worth it, another in the same sector is already responding, qualifying, and scheduling 24/7. The cost of waiting isn’t in the budget — it’s in lost leads and hours spent on repetitive tasks. See how to apply AI in qualification with an AI SDR.
How to start adopting AI in my company without taking a big risk?
Start with the process with the most friction — usually support and qualification on WhatsApp — with a defined scope and human supervision. XMACNA’s free assessment shows, in a few minutes, which process to automate first, with no obligation.
The wave Mustafa Suleyman describes is already running in Brazilian operations. Don’t stay out: get the free assessment and discover which process a Digital Employee can take over first in your company — or talk now with Hermes on WhatsApp.