The Unicorn CTO Podcast #2 — Mehdi Ghissassi (ex-Google DeepMind, CPTO @ AI71)

In this episode of the Unicorn CTO Podcast, I sit down with Mehdi Ghissassi, former Director & Head of Product at Google DeepMind, now Chief Product & Technology Officer at AI71 in Abu Dhabi. We dive deep into one of the most important questions of our time: how AI is reshaping work, companies, and entire economies, far beyond hype, demos, and copilots. Mehdi explains why he left one of the world’s most prestigious AI labs to help build an AI company from scratch in the Middle East, how agentic AI will transform enterprise work, and why the next phase of AI will require more humans, not fewer. This is a wide-ranging, candid conversation touching product, research, enterprise adoption, geopolitics, and the future of human–machine collaboration. 🧠 Key topics we cover Why today’s AI is about cognitive augmentation, not just automation What it really means to build an AI product (models vs platforms vs applications) The reality of agentic systems in enterprises — and why the tech isn’t fully ready yet Why AI adoption is a change-management problem, not a tooling problem How AI companies blend product, services, and forward-deployed engineers The future of enterprises with humans + digital colleagues working together Why the UAE is emerging as a serious AI and knowledge-economy hub 👤 About Mehdi Former Director & Head of Product at Google DeepMind Current CPTO at AI71 (Abu Dhabi) Angel investor focused on AI, deep tech, and sovereign innovation If you’re a CTO, tech leader, founder, or investor trying to understand where AI is really going, this episode is for you. 👉 Subscribe to The Unicorn CTO for deep conversations with the people shaping the future of technology.