McKinsey and General Catalyst leaders declare the era of 'learn once, work forever' is over

McKinsey and General Catalyst execs say the era of 'learn once, work forever' is over | TechCrunch

If there is one point of consensus among the CES 2026 keynote speakers, it is that AI is reshaping technology with a speed and scale unlike any previous technological revolution. In a live taping on Tuesday of the All-In podcast, co-host Jason Calacanis interviewed Bob Sternfels, Global Managing Partner of McKinsey & Company, and Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst. Their discussion focused on how AI is transforming investment strategies and the workforce. "The world has completely changed," Taneja said about the unprecedented growth of AI companies. He noted that while it took Stripe about 12 years to reach a $100 billion valuation, Anthropic, another General Catalyst portfolio company, soared from a $60 billion valuation last year to a "couple hundred billion dollars" this year. Taneja believes we are on the verge of seeing a new wave of trillion-dollar companies. "That's not a pie-in-the-sky idea with Anthropic, OpenAI, and a couple of others," he said. Calacanis pressed them on what's driving this explosive growth. According to McKinsey's Sternfels, while many companies are testing AI products, non-tech enterprises remain on the fence about full adoption. Sternfels says the question that McKinsey consultants often hear from CEOs is: "Do I listen to my CFO or my CIO right now?" CFOs, seeing little return on investment, argue for delaying implementation. Meanwhile, CIOs claim it's "crazy" not to adopt AI because "we'll be disrupted," Sternfels said. Another key concern is how AI is reshaping the labor force. "Some people are looking at AI and they're scared," Calacanis said, noting concerns that AI could replace entry-level jobs traditionally filled by recent graduates. He asked Sternfels and Taneja for advice on what young people should do in this new landscape. Sternfels said that while AI models can handle many tasks, sound judgment and creativity remain the essential skills humans must bring to succeed in an AI-infused world. Meanwhile, Taneja argued that people must recognize that "skilling and re-skilling" will be a lifelong endeavor. "This idea that we spend 22 years learning and then 40 years working is broken," he said. Calacanis agreed that in a world where it may take less time to build an AI agent than to train a new worker, people must find ways to stay relevant. "To stand out, you're going to have to show chutzpah, drive, passion," he said. Sternfels provided a glimpse into that future. While he expects McKinsey to have as many "personalized" AI agents as employees by the end of 2026, he noted that headcount will not necessarily decrease. Instead, the firm is shifting its composition; it's increasing employees who work directly with clients by 25% while reducing back-office roles by the same percentage.

The typical American plan to study for 22 years and work for 40 'is broken,' VC CEO says. Thanks to AI, employees can't coast after graduation anymore | Fortune

Top consulting and venture capital leaders say the idea learning ends after college is outdated in today's AI-driven economy. While many assume formal learning is limited to a bachelor's or master's degree, both the CEO of VC firm General Catalyst, Hemant Taneja, and McKinsey's top executive, Bob Sternfels, say that's not the case anymore. Employees must skill and re-skill constantly to stay afloat, said Taneja, whose VC firm has invested in companies such as Anduril and Anthropic. Taneja discussed this during a live taping of the All-In podcast, hosted by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis Tuesday at CES 2026, a massive annual tech trade show in Las Vegas. "This idea that we spend 22 years learning and then 40 years working is broken," Taneja said. Yet, in a workplace where AI agents can be trained quicker than employees, workers don't only need knowledge, they must find ways to stay relevant, said host Calacanis, who himself made early investments in trading app Robinhood and Uber. "You're going to have to show chutzpah, drive, passion," he said. McKinsey's global managing partner, Sternfels, said he's seen first-hand how AI is transforming the workplace. McKinsey has used the tech to grow client-facing consultant roles by 25%, simultaneously cut the same number of jobs in non-client-facing roles, all the while increasing its output 10% overall. McKinsey will have just as many AI agents as it has human employees by the end of the year, Sternfels said. Currently, its human employees outnumber AI agents 40,000 to 25,000. "Our model has always been synonymous that growth only occurs with total head count growth. Now it's actually splitting," Sternfels said. "We can grow in this part, the client-facing side, and we can shrink in this part and have aggregate growth in total." McKinsey's stark results from incorporating AI agents play to the heart of workers' fear about how AI will disrupt their jobs as adoption increases. Some could argue young workers have a right to worry. A study by the Stanford University Digital Economy Lab in November found early career workers between the ages of 22 to 25 in occupations at most risk of disruption have experienced a 13% relative decline in employment levels since 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT. Another study by Gallup from last year found 37% of workers claimed their workplace had implemented AI. As Sternfels and Taneja said, the added pressure of AI means learning and evolving is more essential than ever. Yet, some have pushed back on the idea that more AI means entry-level workers don't matter. Despite the increased push by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to implement AI at the company, Matt Garman, the CEO of subsidiary Amazon Web Services, has repeatedly said entry-level workers are essential to a healthy organization. Without entry-level workers, "you have no talent pipeline," Garman told Wired. Thus, replacing entry-level workers with AI is "one of the dumbest things I've ever heard," Garman said on the Matthew Berman podcast last year.

CES 2026: AI is helping organisations scale faster, resulting in sharp valuation gains: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja

McKinsey and company chief executive Bob Sternfels believes that there is a need to take a relook at the 700-year-old education system, and create a very different talent base that can operate in an AI-infused world Artificial intelligence (AI) is helping large corporations move faster, shorten development cycles, and embed technology across every layer of business. When deployed effectively, this is translating into sharp gains in valuations and revenues. Speaking at a panel discussion at CES 2026, Hemant Taneja, chief executive of venture capital (VC) firm General Catalyst, and Bob Sternfels, global managing partner at McKinsey & Company, said organisations are scaling at unprecedented speed, driven largely by AI adoption. Taneja cited examples from his portfolio, noting that payments major Stripe took 12-13 years to reach a $100 billion valuation, while AI startup Anthropic achieved that within a couple of years, largely because of artificial intelligence. Founded by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic develops the safety-focused generative AI model Claude. The startup raised $13 billion in September last year, pushing its valuation to $183 billion, up from $61.5 billion in March 2025. While Anthropic had reported a $1 billion revenue run rate at the start of 2025, that scaled to $5 billion by August. A revenue run rate reflects a company's projected annual revenue based on current performance. Commenting on the rapid growth seen at AI startups, Sternfels said large enterprises are increasingly adopting solutions built by companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. "Large enterprises are using technology at a scale and rate that they haven't before. If you look at IT spend as a percentage of revenue, it has gone up. And I think that is what is propelling the 10X growth we are seeing among AI startups," said Sternfels. As AI reshapes how enterprises function, companies will need to rethink hiring criteria to attract talent capable of operating in an AI-driven environment, Sternfels added. He said that for technical roles, traditional signals such as where a candidate studied should matter less than demonstrable skills, such as contributions on platforms like GitHub. "Let's actually get to the content that the candidate creates. That could allow a much wider set of people to enter the workforce through different pathways." Taneja said the education system has historically focused on training people to solve hard problems, but AI is increasingly taking over that role. As a result, the next generation will need to focus more on asking the right questions. "It's about learning how to ask the right questions rather than solving entire worlds of hard problems. That requires a very different mindset, rooted in curiosity," he said. The AI-led shift is also changing how VC firms operate. In October 2025, General Catalyst acquired Summa Health, an Ohio-based healthcare organisation. Addressing questions around why a seed-stage-focussed VC firm was pursuing what resembled a private equity deal, Taneja said traditional industries such as healthcare need structural transformation. "We bought it to create a platform where we can work with our founders and transform the system using AI. It also provides market access. It is extremely hard for healthcare startups to deploy and scale successfully within these systems," Taneja said. The approach upends conventional early-stage investing, Taneja added. Instead of backing startups that disrupt incumbents from the outside, General Catalyst aims to acquire underperforming legacy institutions and open them up to technology-led transformation. "Effectively, you are creating a new asset class. This isn't private equity -- it's about transforming incumbent entities into something fundamentally different," Sternfels said. (The author is attending CES 2026 in Las Vegas at the invitation of the Consumer Technology Association, USA.)