CEO of $248 billion cybersecurity company says workers are about to face a ‘Darwinian moment’ thanks to AI: Evolve or get cut

Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora warns that 90% of employees aren’t AI savvy—and it could determine the fate of their careers.

As AI automates routine tasks and redefines entire roles, the tools are creating a new workplace survival test—one where workers must evolve, or risk being left in the dust. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora warns that 90% of employees at big companies aren’t AI savvy—and it could determine the fate of their careers in the new world.

“I think we’re back to a Darwinian moment where everybody has to figure out who’s really good,” Arora said recently during an episode of the 20VC podcast. 

“[Workers] have to learn. I can’t send them to university; there’s no course you can take in any school anywhere,” he added. “They have to be able to learn on their own.” 

And the leader of the $278 billion cybersecurity firm is already witnessing the fallout. Hiring has screeched to a halt as companies slash thousands of staffers in the name of AI—and tech-savvy talent will have the best shot at career success. 

Nearly 40% of employers are slashing staffers—and he’s recruiting at hackathons

It’s estimated that 39% of business leaders have already made employees redundant due to leveraging AI, according to a 2025 Orgvue study. 

And some businesses have pushed ahead with big workforce cuts; Brian Armstrong’s Coinbase, Jack Dorsey’s Block, and Matthew Prince’s Cloudflare have all issued sweeping layoffs connected to AI. 

“Now, you’ve seen people like Brian Armstrong and Jack Dorsey go out and say, ‘I’m going to decimate my organization, and I’m going to start building from scratch,’” the Palo Alto CEO said. 

“They’ve gone to some version of 30% [to] 40% less people, because they’ve figured out there’s no redemption. ‘I can’t train these people, I’m going to just find the people who are going to come in and help me do this stuff.’”

The other way employers are broaching the issue is by gradually rebuilding their teams with AI-fluent workers. In leading Palo Alto into the next era, Arora says he’s hiring “only through” hackathons to bolster tech skills among his 21,000-strong workforce. 

The CEO is letting natural attrition run its course—with around 2% of employees leaving each month—then replaces them with workers who have proven their AI chops.

“We hire from hackathons. Give me 12 months, [and] I’ll have transformed 20% [to] 25% of my team,” Arora said. “Give me 3 years, I’ll have hopefully enough AI savvy people working at Palo Alto.”

CEOs say it’s sink or swim in the AI era 

The Palo Alto CEO’s forecast reflects a growing concern among business leaders: the AI era will be a sink-or-swim moment for workers, with adaptability becoming the new career currency. No one is immune from the tech transformation—not even the CEOs calling the shots. 

Google leader Sundar Pichai has cautioned that no career path is fully protected from AI’s disruption, advising professionals to take matters into their own hands.

In his eyes, everyone’s role could be impacted by the new tech—even admitting that his own CEO job is “one of the easier things” that AI could take over one day. Pichai emphasized that the tools will create new work opportunities, but also admitted that some roles will be phased out. People have to take initiative themselves to adapt accordingly

“People will need to adapt, and then there will be areas where it will impact some jobs. So, as a society, I think we need to be having those conversations,” Pichai told the BBC in a 2025 interview.

“I think people who learn to adopt and adapt to AI will do better,” the CEO continued. “It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a teacher, a doctor—all those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.”

Micha Kaufman, the CEO of freelance marketplace Fiverr, also issued a warning to professionals: the tech is changing and automating every single role, all the way up to C-suite. And he echoes Pichai in also believing that his coveted, top job isn’t even safe from the AI shift. It’s essential that employees do more than simply talk about the tech—they need to experiment with it, develop their skills, and make it part of their everyday work.

“AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call,” Kaufman warned in an interview with Fortune earlier this year. A year on, he has a message for the C-suite trying to ride out the AI tsunami: “Don’t be a cheerleader. If you’re not practicing, don’t preach…You can’t make AI a value on the wall and then not behave by it.”

And while Nvidia billionaire Jensen Huang doesn’t personally believe that AI can replace his role, he does recognize that competition comes with tech-savvy talent. Instead of fretting over a chatbot or robot stepping on their toes, workers should be wary of their “toxenmaxxing” coworkers going full steam ahead. 

“It is unlikely most people will lose a job to AI,” Huang said during an interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business earlier this year. “It is most likely that most people will lose their job to somebody who uses AI. And so we have to make sure that everybody uses AI.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com