No, do not panic. Your competitor just revealed their card. An AI-first announcement hands you, for free, most of the information you need to move ahead of them. It is to your benefit, not your demise.
The announcement is free market intelligence
When a competitor announces they are AI-first, I read it the way I used to read a rival’s press release at IBM. Not for the claim, which is written for the market. For the detail underneath it, which is written, unintentionally, for me.
Read that press release again, slowly. To claim they are AI-first, your competitor has to show their working. Somewhere in the announcement and the coverage around it, you will find:
- Which products or services are now AI-enabled
- What they changed internally to call themselves AI-first
- Who they partnered with
- What software and licensing agreements they bought
- How much they are spending
That is not a threat. That is market research your competitor paid to produce and published voluntarily. It is exactly what you need to build the strategy that disrupts them.
Expensive is not the same as first
Suppose the announcement reveals a EUR 100 million licensing agreement with a frontier AI vendor. That is EUR 100 million in token usage. It is a strategy. It is not proof of a good one. Just because a company spends EUR 100 million or EUR 500 million does not mean the implementation works. It can be a EUR 500 million mistake.
Calling your company AI-first does not make you an AI company. Being first to spend the most money on AI does not make you AI-first. It makes you one of the most expensive AI companies in your market. The money always flows to the shovel sellers first, and an announcement about spend is usually an announcement about shovels.
The trap you just avoided
Here is what I have heard directly from companies over the past year. To be AI-first, leadership opened the expense account and told employees to build on AI. They spent a year’s worth of AI budget in three or four months. Now they are entering the latter half of 2026 with eight months of expenditure gone and no way to replace it. Very few companies have the balance sheet to absorb that, and the wave of AI budget cuts this summer is partly that bill arriving.
Then there is the board conversation: how do you explain that the year’s money lasted four months, and to what benefit? Some of these companies also released employees with severance packages, only to hire them back weeks later at the same salary or higher, having paid them months or years of package money to leave. That reversal is now well documented: two in three companies that made AI-driven cuts are already rehiring. Being AI-first sounds good. Without the right strategy, it is one of the most expensive sentences a CEO can say.
So ask yourself honestly: are you relieved you did not fall into that trap? Being second, with their map in your hands, is the stronger position, and arriving late is an advantage with an expiry date.
What to do in the 48 hours after the announcement
Do not respond with a louder press release. The loudest AI announcements usually signal the weakest strategies. Instead:
First, analyse everything your competitor published against the checklist above. Treat it as market data. Second, sit with your AI advisor and build the counter-strategy: where their spend is theatre, where it is real, and where your money delivers more to customers for less. Third, prepare your own announcement for later, and make it state delivered results, not intentions. Let them own the promise. You own the proof.
Your competitor being first is expensive. It has always been expensive, in every industry, in every technology wave. Their announcement is not your crisis. It is your briefing. Do not stress. Strategise, implement, succeed.
Frequently asked questions
My competitor announced they are AI-first. Should I be worried?
Not immediately. An AI-first announcement forces your competitor to reveal their products, partners, spend and approach. That is free market intelligence you can build a counter-strategy on. Worry only if their delivery to customers visibly improves, not because of the announcement itself.
Does spending heavily on AI make a company AI-first?
No. Large licensing deals and big budgets prove commitment, not capability. A EUR 500 million spend can be a EUR 500 million mistake. Many companies that rushed to be AI-first spent a year’s AI budget in three or four months and entered the second half of 2026 with nothing left.
How should I respond to a competitor’s AI announcement?
Analyse the announcement as market data, build a counter-strategy with your AI advisor around where their spend is real and where it is theatre, and when you announce, announce delivered results rather than intentions.
Is it bad to be second to AI in my industry?
No. Being first is historically expensive in every technology wave. Being second with your competitor’s map in your hands, learning from their published mistakes and spending against a real strategy, is usually the stronger position.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organisations including IBM, the WHO, the World Government Summit and the European Commission. He founded the IBM Watson AI Lab for Cancer at the Oslo Cancer Cluster and closed over $500 million in enterprise transformation deals as CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant.
If you are leading your organisation through this, I work with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. Get in touch at Anglero.com.