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As developers begin using Claude and Codex to help create Mac, iPhone, and iPad apps in Xcode, spare a moment to consider a recent JumpCloud survey that shows most businesses aren’t really ready for AI — though many think they might be.

Among the highlights from the survey:

• 40% of IT leaders self-assess as mature in their AI practices, yet only 22% meet the rigorous objective standards for leading AI readiness.

• 90% of leaders see productivity gains from AI, but 74% remain concerned about security risks, specifically around unauthorized data access and AI-generated phishing.

• 61% of organizations report the use of unsanctioned AI tools, creating significant visibility and governance gaps.

• 85% of IT leaders agree that secure identity and access management (IAM) is critical for scaling AI safely. (Note that JumpCloud calls itself an AI-powered IT management platform.)

JumpCloud argues that enterprises must deploy IT processes to help protect the identity layer as AI impacts their business, “consolidating identity and access controls for both humans and bots to turn AI from a potential liability into a sustainable engine for growth.”

To support that transition, JumpCloud this week introduced a new investment arm to invest in companies building solutions around AI, security, identity and IT productivity. To an extent, this mirrors competitors in the burgeoning Apple-related IT space (Jamf Ventures, for example) even as it highlights the looming impact AI will have on this side of the market.

One of the first JumpCloud investments, Tofu, uses AI as part of its package of protections against identity fraud during the hiring and onboarding process, an emerging problem for some businesses. You could see Tofu’s tools as indicative of the speed at which AI is evolving. 

Between the thought and the action lies the shadow

People don’t seem prepared for the consequences of the rapid evolution even though business leaders think they are. This gap between perceived preparedness and actual readiness comes after over a decade of rapid digital transformation. That transformation saw the iPhone-driven evolution of mobile business, the collapse of the former hegemonic Microsoft dominance of the enterprise, and an algorithmic assault on some of the principles that underpinned international trade. 

The impact has been felt by every business, and entire business sectors have already been replaced by digitized alternatives. Our century so far has seen an avalanche of change, (remember “1,000 songs in your pocket”?) and enterprise leaders are struggling to keep pace, the JumpCloud survey shows.

Thought leaders have been discussing the need to adopt a new business mindset in which enterprises accept they live in an environment of constant change. These people say creative thinking and a willingness to embrace constant change will be the hallmarks of business success, but when technology moves faster than business leaders, the business environment itself becomes inevitably unstable. 

When it comes to AI deployment, that means confidential data leaks, legal battles as regulators challenge those leaks, and the need to invest in managing digital transformation. 

Faster than progress

AI development is accelerating. New models like GPT-5.3 Codex or Claude Opus 4.6 are insanely powerful and have now evolved something like autonomous discretion. That’s why they can create and iterate application code, which Xcode developers will be exploring now that tools have been made available to them.

It won’t end with code. You can see the direction of travel for yourself at METR, an organization that tracks how long it takes AI models to complete long tasks. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tells it like it is when he says AI models “substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks” could arrive as soon as this year. He also says it might only be a couple of years until AI autonomously builds its own AI successors. 

In the background, the leader of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research Team, Mrinank Sharma, just quit, warning the “world is in peril” from a series of interconnected crises, including AI. Think about that, think about the extent to which you and your business truly meet the standards of AI preparedness, and then consider the challenge it poses to IT decision makers working to keep their heads afloat amid this tsunami of change. 

The gap between perceived and actual readiness is not just a statistic, it is a call to action for every leader. In a world where AI evolves so very quickly, true leadership requires us to prepare for the unknown. The experts say those who manage to stay afloat will be the ones who experiment today, and adapt tomorrow. While you do that, note that AI will be adapting at the very same time and probably faster, and is already in use, sanctioned, or unsanctioned, across your company.

Are you ready? Probably not yet.

Yes, the image to this story was created using AI.

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