Episode #48
Building Teams at Apple, Amazon, and AI Unicorns: Jon Wolheim Makes AI Simple for Non-Technical Leaders
Jon Wolheim Built teams at Apple, Amazon, and two AI unicorns. I make AI make sense to smart people who don't code. 100+ podcast appearances. My guest today spent 20 years building the teams inside Apple, Amazon, and two AI startups that hit billion-dollar valuations in under four years. He built the talent function that took SoundHound AI public on the NYSE, and he was the founding HR executive at a Cambridge AI unicorn now valued north of $10 billion. In 2019 he interviewed Jeff Bezos, who told him to study machine learning, full stop. That answer redirected his career. Today he runs Wolheim Group and AIfluent.Dad, where he makes accomplished executives AI-fluent without the jargon. Jon Wolheim, welcome to the show. NAME: Jon Wolheim — pronounced [REQUIRED: HOW YOU ACTUALLY SAY IT, e.g. "WOLE-hime"] QUESTIONS THAT MAKE FOR GOOD TAPE (steal any of these, or ignore them entirely — I don't need to see questions in advance) You say the biggest constraint on AI isn't compute or capital. So what is it? What did you see inside a company building scientific superintelligence that people on the outside don't understand? You argue experience beats youth in the AI era. Make that case. What's the first thing a 50-year-old executive who has never touched AI should actually do? What's shadow AI, and why should every company be nervous about it? You built an HR function that was AI-native from day one. What did that look like in practice? Which jobs are genuinely at risk, and which ones does everyone wrongly assume are? Bezos told you "machine learning, full stop." What did you do with that? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
