AI’s biggest advocates have been arguing for some time that the technology would usher in an era of unprecedented productivity gains, richly rewarding workers who take advantage of it and displacing those who don’t.
Zeb Evans, CEO of collaboration software startup ClickUp, argues that this change is imminent. Last Thursday, Evans announced at
“Most of the savings from this change will go directly to those who stay. We will introduce a million-dollar salary band. Using AI to create tremendous impact will ensure that you are paid outside the traditional band,” Evans wrote.
According to a Fortune article published a few days ago, ClickUp recently introduced about 3,000 internal AI agents to handle a wide range of complex tasks on behalf of its employees. Instead of performing the work themselves, employees now must direct these agents and ultimately review the output to ensure it meets company standards.
According to the X post, Evans’ goal is for AI to power ClickUp into a “100x organization.”
ClickUp isn’t alone in holding out hope that AI agents will deliver massive productivity gains.
In fact, a recent Gartner survey found that nearly 80% of companies using autonomous technology have cut jobs. However, studies have found that workforce reductions do not necessarily lead to meaningful financial returns.
Gartner’s research shows that some companies are using unproven AI as an excuse to downsize. However, ClickUp claims this is not one of those cases.
Evans told TechCrunch via email that the startup is actually seeing productivity gains from AI agents. ClickUp appears to be preparing to not only measure these efficiencies internally but also include them in future products for its customers.
“Instead of gamifying token costs, we gamify value creation and time savings,” Evans wrote.
In recent months, more and more companies have started monitoring employee token spending and using this as a metric to determine who has actually adopted AI tools. However, critics argue that “tokenmaxxing” (as this concept is known) is the wrong metric because it simply increases the cost of AI.
“People who automate their work with AI will always have jobs,” Evans argued in his post. But as AI continues to take on more tasks, ClickUp will eventually need fewer and fewer people, eliminating those who can’t automate functions well.
The tech world has been theorizing about this scenario for a long time.
There are already extreme examples of high-profile startups taking full advantage of AI automation. Polsia, a one-year-old startup that claims to handle all software operations for sole proprietors, is run by just one person: founder and CEO Ben Broca. These efficiencies are clearly paying off. Polsia just raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation.
If you purchase through links in our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
