Gen AI: Unlocking a New Wave of Innovation, Investments, and Upskilling

Jenny Kay Pollock
May 29
4 min read

By Moha Shah Venture Capital Leader | Future of Mobility, Climate, & Insurtech/Fintech | Strategy, Innovation & Digital Transformation

Originally published on May 1, 2025 on LinkedIn

AI chip on a glowing teal circuit board, displaying "AI" in bold letters. The design conveys a futuristic and advanced technology theme.

Gen AI’s transformative potential across many industries is generating rapid experimentation, innovations, and discourse. Open AI’s public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 sparked momentum around large language model (LLM) applications as it rapidly gained 100M monthly active users in only two months.

Today, leaders across business, technology, venture capital, government, and academia must consider the Gen AI revolution from many vantage points. While no one has a crystal ball to predict with 100 percent accuracy, it’s clear that Gen AI will unlock a new wave of innovations, investments, and upskilling.

Unlocking Innovation with Gen AI

My perspectives on innovation, startups, and digital transformation have been shaped by working across corporate innovation at a global Fortune 100 and in corporate venture capital over the past decade. Also, I’ve learned from startup founders and students across different sectors focused on building Gen AI-native companies. The excitement to launch the next game-changing company is palpable.

Close-up of a smartphone screen showing an AI app folder with icons for ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude, Mistral AI, Gemini, Copilot, Poe. — Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

The current Gen AI revolution rides on the heels of many breakthroughs over the past few decades. “The History of Artificial Intelligence” by Tim Mucci on IBM’s website captures a detailed timeline. The evolving IT architectures, protocols, and LLM apps (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) are unleashing innovations across different industries. For example, current LLM apps can bolster efficiency and aid in work tasks across corporate functions such as marketing, finance, strategy, data science, and HR (e.g., conducting market research, analyzing data and reports, or drafting a marketing campaign).

As with any emerging technology, Gen AI won’t be the silver bullet to solve everything. It will be important to find the right problem to solve for different customers. Real-world use cases coupled with domain expertise and the use of credible data sources will also be critical to unlocking innovations. I also believe that vertical AI solutions for regulated industries such as insurance, banking, and healthcare will be important given unique workflows, volume of consumer data, and privacy laws in those domains.

As companies across different industries leverage Gen AI in test-and-learn and in-production environments, they also will need to ensure ethical AI practices in the regions they operate in, especially amid regulations such as the European Union’s AI Act.

Investments in AI Remains Hot

The Gen AI market is forecasted to be a $1.3T market by 2032 according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s analysis. As a result, there is no shortage of investments pouring into Gen AI and the broader AI ecosystem today. Pitchbook’s analysis found that $131.5B of VC investments globally were allocated to AI and ML startups in 2024, a 50% increase YoY.

Line graph showing AI's global deal value share from 2019 to 2024. Four lines: Global, North American, European, Asia. Source: PitchBook data. — Chart: AI Global Percentage 2024 via Pitchbook

VC deal activity remains strong early into 2025. As of Q1 2025, nearly 60% of VC deal value globally was allocated to AL and ML startups per Pitchbook’s and NVCA Venture Monitor analysis.

Moreover, big tech incumbents – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others – are investing heavily in Gen AI by forming strategic partnerships and building in-house capabilities. To date, Microsoft has invested over $10B in OpenAI while Google has invested over $3B in Anthropic.

As of Q2 2025, several Gen AI-focused deals – VC and M&A - have made recent headlines.

ServiceNow announced plans to acquire Moveworks for $2.85B for its agentic AI capabilities in March 2025
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is reportedly raising a $2B seed round per Reuters.

As the Gen AI era evolves, deal activity is anticipated to remain strong across the AI tech stack.

The Need to Upskill Amid the Gen AI Wave

Do you know about rising Gen AI startups like Agency, Perplexity, or Windsurf? Are you aware of AI agents, prompts, or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)? As the Gen AI era unfolds, there is much to learn and stay updated on for anyone from students to experienced professionals. Beyond the new wave of innovations and investments during this current Gen AI era, it will be important to educate and upskill people across different industries. According to PluralSight’s latest survey of 600 tech leaders and executives across different industries, 75% of organizations had to pause or delay AI projects due to a lack of AI skills.

However, there is a silver lining around new jobs in this evolving AI era. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2025 report revealed that 85% of employers surveyed plan to prioritize upskilling their workforce, largely driven by macrotrends such as tech advances including AI, climate change, and demographic shifts including an aging workforce globally.

C-suite executives, government leaders, students, and consumers ought to learn about Gen AI, use the latest LLM apps in the market, and stay abreast of regulations and companies in the space. Also, it will be important to embrace early learning and skills now to foster a future-ready workforce while also enabling safe, equitable, and ethical AI innovations that serve businesses, governments, and communities worldwide.

As the Gen AI era evolves, the innovations and investments made over the next few years likely will be transformative. New companies and jobs will emerge that create opportunities in different industries. Upskilling will be important to participate in a digital era that continues to be shaped by AI.