McKinsey and General Catalyst executives say era of ‘learn once, work forever’ is over

If there’s one point of consensus among key speakers at CES 2026, it’s that AI is reshaping technology at unprecedented speed and scale.

On Tuesday, during a live taping 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 of 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, went from a $60 billion valuation last year to “a few hundred billion dollars” this year.

Taneja believes we are about to see a new wave of billion-dollar companies. “It’s not a pipe dream with Anthropic, OpenAI and a few others,” he said.

Calacanis pressed them on the reasons for this explosive growth. According to McKinsey’s Sternfels, while many companies are testing AI products, non-tech companies remain hesitant about full adoption. Sternfels says the question McKinsey consultants often hear from CEOs is: “Am I listening to my CFO or CIO right now?”

CFOs, seeing little return on investment, are arguing for delaying implementation. Meanwhile, CIOs say it’s “crazy” not to adopt AI because “we’ll be disrupted,” Sternfels said.

Another major concern is how AI is reshaping the workforce. “Some people are interested in AI and are afraid,” Calacanis said, highlighting concerns that AI could replace entry-level jobs traditionally held 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, good judgment and creativity remain the essential skills that humans must bring to succeed in an AI-infused world.

At the same time, Taneja argued that people need to recognize that “skill acquisition and retraining” will be a lifelong endeavor. “This idea that we spend 22 years learning and then 40 years working is broken,” he said.

Calacanis agrees that in a world where it may take less time to create an AI agent than to train a new worker, people need to find ways to stay relevant. “To stand out, you will need to be bold, dynamic and passionate,” he said.

Sternfels gave a glimpse of that future. While he expects McKinsey to have as many “personalized” AI agents as employees by the end of 2026, he notes that headcount will not necessarily decline. Instead, the company is changing its composition; this increases the number of employees who work directly with customers by 25% while reducing back-office roles by the same percentage.