Week 15. Kieron is back from six days on the beige boat of joy — a 1980s river cruiser that he describes as “full on retro”. Neil describes Kieron as the “Magnum P.I. on the Thames”. If you’re lucky enough to be under 50, look it up. Kieron said his six-year-old son’s favourite thing about the whole trip was watching YouTube on the iPad. The joy of parenting in 2026.
“Neil, you’re the biggest problem in the company” 😬
Both Kieron and Neil independently asked Claude to give them brutal, honest feedback on their business — and told it not to worry about their feelings. Neil went first. Claude told him he was the biggest blocker in the company. Then Kieron ran the same exercise. Same result. They’re now wondering if Claude just tells everyone they’re the biggest problem — which, frankly, might be the kindest way to land a difficult truth. The more useful output: stop comparing yourselves to Copilot, focus on the context layer, security, compliance and control — that’s where the real value is. And get a non-exec director. Claude was quite insistent about that last one.
Scaling — what would we do if we launched today? 🚀
Kieron’s river-based reflection led to a genuinely important strategic question: what would Leading AI do differently if they were starting from scratch today? Not abandoning anyone — that’s not who they are — but drawing a line in the sand and asking what a cleaner, simpler, better-priced version of the business looks like. The pricing team session from last week fed into this, with Claude doing a brilliant job of synthesising everyone’s thoughts and — as Neil noted — flattering Kieron just enough to make his ideas feel more persuasive than they perhaps were. Behavioural science at work.
Three customer stories 📋
Neil had a busy week of conversations. A private sector organisation selling personalised services to global clients wants to partner with Leading AI to scale their communications — consistent messaging across multiple regions, multiple languages, explainability and accuracy baked in. A NOC/SOC security company (Network Operations Centre and Security Operations Centre, for those who didn’t know — Neil didn’t) wants to use KnowledgeFlow to get the right information to the right people in real time during incidents. And a large organisation doing lots of public sector bidding got in touch off the back of the 100/100 bid story — they want to explore BidWriter. Meeting on Monday.
BidWriter impresses a fellow boater 🛶
Kieron set up BidWriter for an organisation at speed last week — they got their documents in the day before the tender deadline, used it straight out of the box on a big bid, and the feedback from the team was excellent. Kieron bumped into the CEO on the river over the weekend. The CEO was delighted with the result. Neil noted that the CEO still hasn’t signed the contract. His suggestion: contracts should only be signed, in person, on the beige boat of joy from now on.
Claude Opus 4.8 is out 🤖
Kieron flags the new Opus 4.8 launch. Key improvement: it’s reportedly better at knowing when it doesn’t know something — which is genuinely hard to achieve. An AI that doesn’t know what it doesn’t know is a hallucination machine. An AI that flags uncertainty is a trust machine. The question is how Anthropic is achieving it, because the model itself doesn’t know what context it’s missing. Meanwhile, Microsoft has apparently cut their internal Claude licences because it’s too expensive. You can’t run Opus at scale on a thin margin. Sonnet is the sensible choice for KnowledgeFlow — and even then, token costs are a real consideration.
Model switching — the Hoover analogy 🌀
Why would you turn the suction down on a Hoover? Kieron doesn’t understand that setting. Neil does — you wouldn’t you’re your Granny’s teapot flying up the tube. The analogy maps perfectly to model switching: customers say they want it, but what they really want is the best model for the job without having to think about it. The answer is automated intelligent switching — a governing agent that picks the right model for the task. Leading AI monitors models constantly. Most customers don’t — and AI marketing on LinkedIn isn’t exactly an unbiased source of guidance.
Neil is heading to Scotland. He says his friend there is lovely, but after two beers he can’t understand a word he says. He just nods sagely and reverses his position if the man looks grumpy. To be fair, Neil does that with pretty much everyone when he’s had a drink. 🤣
Two mates. A bar. Thirty years of business between them. And all they want to talk about is AI.
Pull up a stool — we’ll get the beers in. 🍺
