How to get your company AI pilled

Most companies are still debating their AI strategy. They are overthinking it. Here is the playbook we followed to get everyone at the company building using AI. Ramp's AI usage is up 6,300% from last year. 99.5% of the team active on AI tools. 84% using coding agents weekly. 1,500+ apps shipped on our internal platform in six weeks, from 800+ different builders. Non-engineers now account for 12% of all human-initiated PRs on the production codebase - thousands per month - using Ramp Inspect, our home-built coding agent. We did this by being obsessed over every employee embracing this new technology - akin to how computers entered the workforce. We built our own Claude Cowork called Glass that gives anyone at the company a highly configured AI agent that is fully connected with Ramp's systems and aware of how we build. We hosted the largest AI hackathon ever - 700 participants across sellers, CX, legal, marketing, finance, coached by 100 of our most capable engineering and product teammates. They shipped more in a week than we previously could in a year. We modified our hiring process and talent management process. We gave everyone unlimited budget to build, learn, and explore. We created leaderboards to incentivize usage. We reorged teams around those who see the future. We celebrated wins at all hands. We relentlessly pushed every single person and leader to build. And the result is far beyond what I could ever imagine. Here's how we got here. The interesting part isn't the numbers or the tools. It's that we didn't have a plan. All we had was a culture and talent, and we kept doubling down on the things that were working with the people and technology in front of us. And watched it compound. 1. The second best time to start is today. At Ramp, our culture is velocity. It shapes every process and team ritual. That culture turned out to be the single biggest accelerant for AI adoption. At our January 2025 company kickoff, we told the whole company we would become the most productive company in the world. We believed we could do it given Ramp's culture. We had no idea how. We started with the obvious: Leadership clarity that AI usage is an expectation Dedicated AI "guild" that were responsive to any questions Slack channels where teams can share what they built Dedicated all hands time to celebrate builders Mandated AI usage and tracking for everyone There was no formal change management program. No mandatory training curriculum. Instead, we built the infrastructure for people to teach themselves and each other. The reality is that teams just need to be given a chance. Everyone wants to build. And with AI, anyone can. 2. Treat AI proficiency as a learning curve, not a light switch. A year ago, most of us used AI the way everyone did. ChatGPT in a tab. AI search in Notion. Fine, but not transformational. What we observed was that productive output leaps when people clear certain thresholds of comfort. Almost nobody outside of some exceptional engineers was operating at the upper levels before 2025. But in late 2025 and this year, we accelerated massively -- because we spent last year building a strong foundation first. We think about AI proficiency in four levels: L0: Sometimes uses ChatGPT. Has not changed any workflows. If you're still here and not self-starting, you will most likely not be at the company. L1: Built custom GPTs, used Notion agents, dabbled in Claude Code. Starting to see what's possible but hasn't compounded it yet. L2: Built an app that automates part of their job. Committed code or contributed feedback to others' work. This is where things get real. L3: Systems builders. They don't just use AI - they build the infrastructure that levels up everyone else. These people are force multipliers. Our job is to get everyone up the ladder. Three things make that possible: Build tools that meet people where they are. We started by shifting the whole company to Claude and Notion AI connected to all of our workplace tools - a low technical bar where everyone could participate and get meaningful benefit. That got people from L0 to L1. Raise expectations as tools mature. AI proficiency moved into hiring screens, onboarding, and how we talk about performance. Not as an end in itself, but as a stated expectation: getting good at these tools is essential to doing any job at Ramp well. That pushes L1s to L2. Match the mandate to the tooling. If you raise expectations before the tools can deliver, you burn credibility and people stop listening. 3. Embrace creative destruction. This is the part that makes Ramp exhilarating and uncomfortable in equal measure. Many of the tools we shipped in January 2026 are already obsolete - replaced by better versions, often from the same builders. We've gotten comfortable with a shelf life of weeks, not months. Every LLM update, every improvement to Claude Code or Codex harnesses, every new batch of skills we release reshapes what's possible. If your internal tools f