Jun 30, 2025

– JOSH BERSIN Like Read Time: min There has been a lot of debate about whether this multi-billion dollar investment in AI is going to pay off. Well in HR alone, I’m here to report that the answer is YES. This week Jim Cramer, the most famous Wall Street TV personality and hedge-fund manager, actually brought it out. In Cramer’s interview with Scott Boatright, the new CEO of Chipotle, Scott states definitively that their new AI recruiting platform, powered by Paradox, is directly responsible for the company’s 13.1% revenue increase in Q4 and is now one of their most valuable tools for growth and resilience in the year ahead. The new AI hiring assistant Ava Cado (cute name) has dramatically accelerated speed and quality of hire, which lets Chipotle open more shifts and handle more growth. Paradox, which pioneered the use of conversational AI in recruiting almost a decade ago, now exemplifies the most mature and sophisticated examples of a domain-focused AI agent I have seen. And Paradox customers like Chipotle, McDonalds, FedEx, and others are proven examples of “The Rise of the Superworker” in action. As we discuss in our research and deliver through our own tool Galileo™, AI transformation in companies goes through four stages. It starts with an AI assistant (ie. a candidate chat bot), then moves to automation (ie. an automatic interview scheduler), then to multi-functional agents (a system that enables a candidate to select a job, upload their resume, and take an assessment), to autonomy (a system like Paradox that does all of this at scale.) While there are many vendors chasing this market (LinkedIn, Eightfold, and others), Paradox is clearly in the lead. And today Paradox also announced the acquisition of People Analytics Platform Eqtble, an advanced data management system that will bring real-time reports and actionable analytics to the solution. Yes the AI agent market is frothy with agents, but mature solutions are still rare. Paradox, which has been laser focused on high-volume recruiting (and also white collar staffing), has built one of the most interesting and proven “automation” platforms in the market, and their success has exploded their growth. (SAP, Workday, and many other HCM vendors partner with and use them.) This is all just beginning. Four stage AI platforms like Galileo (HR agent), Sana (L&D agent), Joule (SAP assistant), NowAssist (Service and Support assistant), MS Copilot, and many more are coming. While I know many of you are still building your internal plans, this CNBC video should help you get budget and support to accelerate your own AI transformation program. Additional Information AI in HR: Certificate Program in The Josh Bersin Academy Galileo™ Pro, The Essential AI Assistant for Everything HR