For much of the last two decades, the CTO role was defined by architecture. CTOs were the stewards of scalability, reliability, infrastructure and long-term technical vision. Success meant designing systems that could withstand growth, choosing the right tech stack and building platforms that would not collapse under complexity. The CTO was, in many ways, the chief architect of stability. That playbook is rapidly changing.

New tools launch weekly and the promise is enormous: faster workflows, smarter products and entirely new business models. But there is a reality that far fewer leaders are prepared for: the biggest bottleneck in AI won’t be technology. It will be talent.

For decades, the default model was simple: hire locally, build teams in a single geography, centralize operations and bring everyone together into the same office.