The 48-year-old serial entrepreneur has worked in tech for the past two decades. He’s currently building his third startup, Scope3, a supply-chain emissions data company. And O’Kelley argues that return-to-office mandates mark the line between companies that are truly preparing for an AI-first future—and those stuck in the past.
“The best companies are going to actually dump their offices to learn to work with non-bodied employees,” O’Kelley exclusively told Fortune. “Anybody who has a back-to-office culture is actually hurting themselves.”
While many CEOs claim they’re calling workers back to their desks to increase productivity, O’Kelley argued that they’ll never be as productive as remote-first firms, like his, that have the pick of top global talent and operate around the clock.
“My company works every hour of the day because I have folks in Australia, and folks in San Francisco,” he explained.
Being spread across time zones doesn’t just make them more available to customers—it forces teams to be efficient and lean on the latest tech in ways traditional office-based companies simply don’t need to.
“That’s a world where everything is written down, because you have to transfer knowledge across these time zones, and we film videos for each other,” he said, adding that it’ll make it easier to integrate with AI eventually too.
It’s why companies focusing on presence rather than actual productivity gains that could launch them into an AI-first future are at a real disadvantage
“The thing is, if you build a culture that’s asynchronous and remote, it means you’re building a culture for AI to thrive,” O’Kelley added. “If you’re building an office culture, you are actually not building an AI-first ecosystem.”
O’Kelley isn’t the first tech leader to sound the alarm about the AI race. Numerous CEOs have warned their peers—and employees—that those who don’t embrace AI will be the first to fall behind.
But all of those efforts could go to waste if firms aren’t actually structured to take full advantage of AI, as O’Kelley pointed out.
