‘Use AI or lose your job’, warns Airwallex boss

“If you’re not integrating Al into your daily workflow, you’re putting your role at risk,” said Mr Zhang.

“We’re entering a new era where Al isn’t optional — it’s foundational. The speed, quality, and impact of what we deliver must reflect the tools now at our fingertips. If you’re not using Al every day to enhance your thinking, automate tasks, or test new ideas — you’re falling behind.”

And Mr Zhang is practising what he preaches. He used AI to write the memo that ended with a more optimistic call to action, saying “let’s lead the future – not watch others build it”.

 

It’s been a rollicking ride for Airwallex, the Aussie fintech worth almost $10bn that Mr Zhang and four friends founded in a Melbourne cafe a decade ago.

Airwallex global head of product Shannon Scott told this masthead previously that working at the company “isn’t for everyone”. Indeed, there have been reports of an abrasive and aggressive culture.

For others, it is the atmosphere typical of a fast-growing company, which has been determined to disrupt the big banks.

But when it comes to AI, Mr Zhang has found an unlikely ally in Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn, who also believes that executives must use the technology regularly and encourage their reports to do the same to turbocharge productivity and maintain a competitive edge.

 

Mr Comyn says Australian companies need to embrace the artificial intelligence revolution, warning those who are “late or reluctant adopters” will struggle to compete.

“The reality is, we’re all facing uncertainty in our roles in different, but I’m absolutely convinced that the best way to prepare for the future is to be part of the future – to have the agency and engagement, rather than being sort of a reluctant or a late adopter,” Mr Comyn said earlier this year.

Across the economy, companies are eager to talk up how they are using AI. Yet, productivity remains sluggish, while insolvencies are up 15 per cent.

At the same time, the Albanese government has forecast that AI could inject up to $600bn a year into the economy by the end of the decade.

But where are those gains, and why are they taking so long.

 

Marketing software company Hubspot says it comes down to scale, saying only 18 per cent of Australian businesses have fully AI integrated systems – and those companies are going to leap frog ahead of their rivals, hence Mr Zhang’s warning that failing to use AI will put your job at risk.

Hubspot’s State of Business Growth in Australia 2025 report found that those companies with fully integrated systems were six times more likely to outperform their peers and four times more likely to see return on investment from AI within one month.

Hubspot Asia Pacific marketing director Kat Warboys said the message was clear: “adopt AI or be disrupted by it”.

“Wearing my marketing hat like this is happening to me, whether I decide to find a way to use AI in my tools every day,” Ms Warboys said.

“There are these tools that are there to help … change the way that we work. Playbooks are definitely being pulled upside down. Things that were working aren’t working the way they used to.”

So what does success look like?

 

“Benefits include things like being able to respond to customers or anticipate customer needs faster,” Ms Warboys said.

“We’re using AI to be able to predict indicators of churn, and then we can get ahead of that. Like, ‘this person seems like they’re about to churn?’ What can we do? What’s that touchpoint needed to prevent that? So we start to see very tangible outcomes of using AI in a number of these use cases, from marketing, sales, customer success. So I definitely that’s competitive advantage.”

But for many, using AI remains overwhelming. Ms Warboys said the best way to start was identifying a core business problem.

“What is it that is keeping you or your boss up at night? What is an issue? What is a task that is having a lot of human hours spent on repetitive tasks? And how could that help the business grow?

“So I’d be thinking, ‘OK, well, what would happen if we could increase the number of customers that we’re able to respond to? What would happen if our sales team are only speaking to really high fit, high intent prospects, as opposed to those that are not as identified as a good fit for our products’.

“If we could increase that, that would be a good problem to solve. And then, how can AI help us do that? Again, not going to the old ways – ‘Well, we just hire more reps, or we just do this or that’. In many ways, I think we’ve got to hone in our skills more at that level of identifying what is the problem, and how do we think of new ways to solve it?”

This article first appeared in The Australian as Airwallex staff must use AI daily or ‘risk’ their job, warns boss Jack Zhang