AI's 'new enlightenment': Jordan Jacobs on the agentic workplace
Key points
Key takeaways from The Unlimited Podcast interview with Radical Ventures managing partner and co-founder Jordan Jacobs (January 2026):
The new enlightenment. Jacobs endorses Fei-Fei Li's framing of this moment as the "new enlightenment" — the dissemination of intelligence, just as the Enlightenment disseminated science — and says AI is about to remake white-collar work within two years.
Agentic AI defined. Agents act as a co-worker connected to an employee's data and apps, permissioned at individual level: they read, summarise, draft and take action overnight, e.g. distilling analyst reports into a chart and drafting emails for review by the morning.
Cohere's North rollout. Radical portfolio company Cohere's enterprise agent platform, North, is being deployed at RBC as its organisation-wide agent platform, and Bell Canada has announced its own rollout;, most customers are global rather than Canadian.
Productivity leap. Jacobs says agents are adding 20–40% or more in productivity gains across the board — levels not seen since the industrial revolution — driving cost savings and revenue growth inside organisations.
Adoption curve. Fewer than 5% (possibly under 1%)of white-collar workers currently use an AI agent;, Jacobs predicts over 90% (maybe 95%)of Western white-collar workers will within two years, describing it as the most profound shift in economies and society since the industrial revolution.
First displacement: coding. Coding is the first job category being displaced: tools like Cursor have grown from zero to over $700M in revenue in 18 months or less, and agents already outperform day-one junior hires at a fraction of the cost.
Apprenticeship at risk. The white-collar training model of throwing junior hires grunt work to learn the business is under threat, because agents do day-one what juniors are hired to do, better and cheaper — so hiring, training and career ladders will have to change.
Read more: Ginsler Wealth
