Anxiety over an AI-driven future has crept into nearly every corner of the workplace. From junior staffers worried about automation to managers fearing irrelevance, no one feels entirely safe.
Even CEOs aren’t immune: nearly three-quarters say they fear losing their jobs if they can’t deliver business results with AI.
But David Rogier isn’t one of them. The MasterClass founder and CEO sees AI not as a threat but as an accelerant, one that’s already reshaped how he works on a daily basis.
“If you aren’t using AI and you’re a CEO, what are you doing?” Rogier told Fortune. “You are holding yourself back. You’re like, ‘I only want to be 80% as productive as I can be.’”
By his count, being a “heavy user” of the technology has made him so efficient he’s reclaimed the equivalent of the entire workday, time he now funnels into the parts of the business that demand his leadership the most.
MasterClass’s CEO uses eight separate AI tools
With so many different AI tools on the market, it’s impossible to just use one and be a time maximizer. Instead, Rogier’s “AI CEO Stack” consists of over half a dozen LLMs.
Rogier’s main AI helper is a custom version of ChatGPT named “Davidify” that synthesizes all of his notes. If he needs to draft an email or a speech, all he has to do is prompt it with a few bullet points, and it will write it in his style.
His AI stack also includes:
- Gamma: “Builds my all-hands decks faster and way prettier“
- Make.com + Todoist + ChatGPT: “Auto-prioritizes my to-do list automatically every night. No more staring at 50 tasks and trying to prioritize.“
- NotebookLM: “Takes all the YouTube talks and academic papers I want to watch and read and makes me a 15-min podcast for my walks.“
- Lovable: “Rapid product mockups leads to way faster feedback loops.“
- On Call: “I ask Chris Voss and Mark Cuban questions and don’t worry about actually bugging them.”
- Claude Projects: “Loaded with our customer demographics. I ask it for real-time feedback on new ideas.“
- Suno: “Surprisingly? The best custom work (and workout) playlists.”
How CEOs are embracing AI in the workplace
Rogier hasn’t been alone in his embrace of AI. CEOs, especially in the tech sector, see daily AI usage as table stakes for staying competitive.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said GPT-5 within Microsoft’s 365 Copilot has “become part of my everyday workflow, adding a new layer of intelligence spanning all my apps.” In fact, the billionaire uses the generative technology to generate meeting summaries, project updates, monitor productivity, and more.
Similarly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang uses AI as both a learning and research tool, most often utilizing Perplexity and ChatGPT.
“I use [AI] as a tutor every day,” Huang said at the Milken Institute Global Conference earlier this year. “In areas that are fairly new to me, I might say, ‘Start by explaining it to me like I’m a 12-year-old,’ and then work your way up into a doctorate-level over time.”
Other tech leaders have gone even further with their AI use. CEOs such as Zoom’s Eric Yuan and Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski have both appeared on recent earnings calls using AI-generated video replicas that deliver scripted remarks in their voice and likeness. And Klarna has even gone so far as to open up a 24/7 “AI CEO Hotline,” a service that fields customer inequities around the clock, responding in Siemiatkowski’s conversational style in both English and Swedish.
With AI only improving with time, these CEOs have at a minimum set an example of how technology can be integrated throughout their work—and likely expect their employees to do the same.