🍒 Hiring for AI leadership right now is unlike hiring for almost any other function.

I had a great conversation this week with one of our portfolio companies, Maze about what it really takes to hire a Head of AI in today’s market....and they are hiring one (link below).

🚀 A few things stood out:

• The best profiles often combine deep research foundations with real production experience.
• It’s not enough to understand models - the role is about prioritising what actually matters, scaling what works, and avoiding 50 interesting projects that won’t move the company forward.
• In the strongest teams, this person also helps answer a critical question: will our AI systems hold up when the biggest customers arrive?
• They're building AI-native cloud security, moving fast enough that the agent architecture shifts under them regularly.
• The right person has actually built products where LLMs/agents are the core thing, not a side feature, and ideally seeing this in an AI-native company that has shipped and grown at speed.