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Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat has warned business leaders against racing too far ahead on AI adoption. He said that companies risk investing in capabilities no one wants. Ezzat, who leads the French Fortune 500 technology and consultancy firm, said executives are increasingly experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) over applied AI, with financial bets large enough to concern boards over capital expenditure implications. In an interview with Fortune, Ezzat said that business leaders must find a balance between moving too far, too fast, and remaining stuck on the starting blocks.“You don’t want to be too ahead of the learning curve. If [you are] you’re investing and building capabilities that nobody wants,” he told FortuneThe comments come as Capgemini has faced challenges this year, including the sale of its US subsidiary, Capgemini Government Solutions, which had been providing tracing and removal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The company’s share price has declined amid broader tech selloff concerns over AI spending. Ezzat explained on LinkedIn that the American business acted autonomously to protect US classified information. However, the interview with Ezzat took place before the ICE controversy emerged.

Why Capgemini CEO thinks AI progress will be gradual and not sudden

Capgemini’s CEO says AI development is expected to progress gradually rather than through a sudden shift. Drawing on experience with earlier technology trends, such as the metaverse, the company views experimentation and limited pilots as a more practical way to adopt emerging technologies. Capgemini is currently testing areas including 6G, quantum computing, and robotics, while acknowledging that it remains uncertain which of these will deliver long-term value.“Is everything ready to mature? No. But we want to be there to be able to see when things start to mature, when we can really start scaling up, not waiting to see, ‘Okay, oh, now it’s moving.’ We have to do something, right? So, you have to be investing—but not too much—to be able to be aware of the technology, following at the speed to make sure that we are ready to scale when the adoption starts to accelerate,” Ezzat explained.“AI is a business. It is not a technology,” Ezzat says, cautioning that leaders often view AI as a “black box that’s being managed separately.” While there are technologies behind it, he argues that the focus should be on business change rather than isolated technical use. AI, he says, should not be limited to maintaining existing operations.“The question you [the CEO] have to focus on is: ‘How can your business be significantly disrupted by AI?’ Not ‘How is your finance team going to become more efficient?’ I’m sure your CFO will deal with that at the end of the day,”Ezzat noted.“How do you deal with what we call AI-human-centricity? Basically, the need to integrate AI with humans. How do you get humans to trust the agent? The agent can trust the human, but the human doesn’t really trust the agent,”Ezzat added.