From Human Capital to Growth Capital

• July 24, 2026
• Tadhg Patrick Lawless

In a recent article, “Know Thyself; Know Thine LLM”, we touched on the topic of how users’ self-knowledge in tandem with their understanding of AI technology can increase the organisational value of AI adoption across a wide range of use cases.

Beyond this, it is worth examining how employees’ self-knowledge and AI skills can go on to translate into higher company valuations when their skills are applied as part of their firm’s growth logic.

A key aspect in AI adoption, highlighted in a June 2026 Harvard Business Review (HBR) publication by Benartzi, Long and Puntoni, is the choice of whether to use AI primarily to cut costs or to support growth. This decision represents one of the central strategic questions that companies adopting AI have been navigating since its wider proliferation. AI can be deployed by companies as a lever to either make their existing operation more efficient (pull) or maximise their growth (push), but the ability to gainfully push or pull depends strongly on the availability of the skills and knowledge required to maximise the Return on AI (ROAI) the firm can reap from the exercise.

Companies can do both, but of course they need access to the relevant skills in order to justify implementing the dual lever.

a firm growing organically at 5% annually was worth 50% more than an otherwise identical firm growing at 3%.
At 7% growth, the valuation increased by 122%

As noted in the HBR, the natural reflex of most executives inclines towards a pull-decision: use AI to cut costs by introducing new efficiencies, freeze hiring (for example) and grow profits by shrinking the firm’s cost base as much as possible.

However, the potential gains available from all cost-cutting exercises have a limit. As the article’s writers succinctly put it “Costs can only be cut to zero, but revenue can grow without a ceiling.“

A separate study by the same authors demonstrated the different extents to which costs and growth affect company valuation.

First, as a cost-cutting exercise, they imagined 50% of a firm’s cost base was amenable to AI-driven improvements, and that AI could reduce those costs by 10% on average. In the resulting simulation, the total impact on overall company expenses was circa 5%. This reduction was found to increase the value of the firm by about 10%.

In stark contrast, they found that a firm growing organically at 5% annually was worth 50% more than an otherwise identical firm growing at 3%. At 7% growth, the valuation increased by 122%.

These valuation figures are not the result of outcome-driven modelling – they are based on standard methods by which markets routinely price companies using earnings multiples.

AI therefore has a clear use case in wealth maximisation – the case which is perhaps adopted least often, in favour of cost-cutting exercises which offer limited gains while generally loosening the labour market through layoffs, redundancies and hiring freezes.

From a skills perspective, it appears that the application of AI tools across the organisational domains which underpin growth and business development is key to unlocking the full value they can offer.

Costs can only be cut to zero, but revenue
can grow without a ceiling

PWC show in their AI Performance Study on this topic that companies leading the field in AI uptake realised strong gains in operational areas such as product development, speed to market, organisational agility and customer experience, while also making many of the efficiency gains commonly targeted by AI adopters in general. Leaders also deployed AI to support the identification of emerging value pools and make decisions, allowing them to move more quickly to address market trends than their efficiency-focused competitors.

Here we see strong value emerge in the space where skills in big-data analysis and AI intersect. Marketing, strategy and product development are all further knowledge areas which can unlock superior gains for firms when AI is intelligently integrated into operational and decision-making processes.

If more companies adopting AI choose to ‘push’ that lever and to use it as a growth tool, they may find therein a path to dramatically grow the multiple on earnings by which the market values their operations. Accordingly, candidates offering the specific knowledge and AI skills needed to power companies’ growth engines may see their opportunity field ripening apace.

References:

Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative. (2026). Can Generative AI Double Enterprise Value? University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). (2026). ROI from AI: Moving Beyond Experimentation to Measurable Value.

Harvard Business Review. (2026). Companies Are Using AI for Efficiency. They Should Use It to Grow. Harvard Business Review, June 2026.