For a while, the tech world was gripped by a trend called tokenmaxxing. CEOs encouraged staff to use generative AI as aggressively as possible, treating the costs as a secondary concern. The party ended when the bills arrived; companies are now retreating, cutting back software licenses and shutting down internal AI experiments that never proved their worth.
This is the difference between treating a tool as a toy versus a piece of capital equipment. While the initial wave of broad experimentation wanes, some industries are quietly using AI to solve slow, expensive, and rigid development cycles that have plagued them for decades.
The Shift from Guesswork to Virtual Physics
General Motors is currently using AI to collapse the time it takes to develop new vehicles. In the past, engineers worked in silos, designing parts separately and then spending months building and testing physical prototypes to see if they worked together. Today, they are using generative physics-based design and simulation to integrate those steps into a single digital environment.
Think of it as moving from an analog blueprint to a living, reactive model. Engineers can now run a crash simulation in less than sixty seconds—a task that previously required fifteen hours of computing power. By running thousands of automated scenarios that incorporate variables like terrain or driver behavior before a single piece of steel is cut, they can identify flaws early. This allows them to focus their limited physical testing time on the most critical improvements rather than discovery.
For an executive or a product manager, this isn't just about faster software; it’s about compression of the development lifecycle. When a vehicle like the GMC Hummer can go from a design concept to a showroom in two years instead of five, the competitive advantage is immense. The lesson for the broader enterprise isn't to push AI into every workflow, but to identify the bottlenecks that were previously untouchable.
The real question is no longer about how much AI you can run, but what specific wall you are hitting that it can finally help you break down.
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