Q3 2025 Earnings Takeaway: AI-Driven Transformation

Recent earnings calls from leading companies reveal a seismic shift: AI-powered automation is revolutionizing operations, boosting productivity, and reshaping workforces across industries. From tech giants to retail and logistics, AI is automating 20-50% of routine tasks—such as coding, customer support, and logistics—driving unprecedented efficiency gains while prompting significant adjustments to the workforce.

Key Examples from Q3 Earnings

1. Klarna: CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski highlighted the company’s AI-first strategy, which boosted revenue per employee from $369,000 to $1 million in two years. By automating customer support and routine tasks, Klarna now operates with a leaner team of ~4,000 employees, showcasing the efficiency potential of AI.

2. Intuit: CEO Sasan Goodarzi noted that embedding AI and automation across operations drove margin improvements across all business segments. Following 1,800 layoffs (~10% of its 18,000-person workforce) in early 2025, Intuit reinvested in AI to streamline processes.

3. Microsoft: CEO Satya Nadella emphasized AI coding agents on GitHub, handling millions of code reviews monthly and automating significant engineering workflows. While specific workforce impacts weren’t detailed, the efficiency gains are clear.

4. NVIDIA: CEO Jensen Huang highlighted AI’s role in accelerating performance through reasoning AI models for training and inference. Huang emphasized AI as a job augmenter, not a replacer, focusing on performance gains.

5. Salesforce: CEO Marc Benioff celebrated Agentforce’s success, with 4,000+ paid customers and $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Agentforce automates sales and support tasks, replacing ~4,000 customer support roles while boosting revenue per employee across its workforce of over 70,000.

6. SAP: CEOs Christian Klein and CFO Dominik Asam reported AI-powered efficiencies enabling a leaner headcount. With €0.6 billion in restructuring payouts, SAP reduced its workforce by 8,000 in 2025, enabling over 30,000 engineers to deliver more software with fewer resources.

7. UPS: CEO Carol Tomé discussed automation in sorting and robotics, including label application, which contributed to $3.5 billion in cost savings through 74 facility closures and a planned reduction of approximately 20,000 operational roles (around 5% of its global workforce of over 500,000) by 2025.

8. Walmart: CEO Doug McMillon emphasized the importance of balancing AI and supply chain automation with workforce stability, maintaining a flat headcount of 2.1 million despite revenue growth. AI is transforming inventory and customer service roles without adding jobs.

These insights, echoed across nearly every earnings call, underscore AI’s transformative impact: automating routine tasks, boosting productivity, and reshaping workforce structures.

A Real-World Analogy: The AI-Powered Coffee Shop

Imagine a coffee shop with 10 baristas serving 500 customers daily, or 50 customers per barista. Now, introduce AI: touchscreen kiosks take orders, robotic machines prepare drinks, and real-time systems track inventory. The shop now serves 1,000 customers with just 4 baristas, increasing output to 250 customers per barista—a 5x productivity boost. This mirrors historical innovations like Ford’s assembly line, which slashed car production time from 12 hours to 2 hours, driving a 6x productivity gain, higher wages, and massive growth. Klarna’s 2.71x revenue-per-employee increase in two years reflects similar gains, with AI still in its early stages, signaling strong earnings growth and market potential.

What Are AI Agents?

AI agents are like supercharged personal assistants that act autonomously to achieve goals. Unlike reactive tools like search engines, agents proactively handle tasks from start to finish. Here’s how they work:

• Perception: They “see” data, such as emails, stock prices, or databases.

• Planning: They break down goals into steps (e.g., “Book a flight” → search options → compare prices → book).

• Action: They execute tasks using tools (e.g., sending emails, running code).

• Learning: They improve over time by reflecting on successes and failures.

Think of JARVIS from Iron Man, managing complex tasks independently, or a simpler agent like Siri booking an Uber. Advanced agents can run entire marketing campaigns—researching trends, drafting content, scheduling posts, and analyzing results—while you relax.

The State of AI Agents in 2025: AI agents are in their “toddler phase”—functional but imperfect:

• Early Wins: Basic agents, like Zapier or Salesforce’s Agentforce, automate simple workflows (e.g., customer service queries or code reviews)—open-source tools like Auto-GPT and LangChain power thousands of experiments.

• Challenges: Agents fail ~20-50% of the time on complex tasks, requiring human oversight for high-stakes work. Scalability and safety issues, like ensuring agents don’t “go rogue,” remain hurdles.

• Adoption: Only 10-15% of Fortune 500 companies utilize production agents, primarily for tasks that are siloed (Gartner, 2025). Consumer versions are still experimental.

Today’s “Level 1” agents handle simple automation, but “Level 2” agents (multi-tool orchestration) are scaling fast. By 2027-2030, “Level 3” general agents—capable of weeks or months of autonomous work—could emerge as compute costs drop and models improve.

Why This Matters for the Economy and Investments

We are witnessing a pivotal moment in economic history, akin to the Industrial Revolution or the advent of the Internet. For over 200 years, economic growth has been closely tied to two key factors: population growth and productivity growth, resulting in ~5% annual GDP growth (with 2-3% after accounting for inflation). AI agents are rewriting this equation by unleashing unprecedented productivity gains.

Companies like Klarna, with a 2.71 times increase in revenue per employee, and SAP, which delivers more software with fewer engineers, demonstrate how AI amplifies human output—often by 10 times or more. Instead of hiring additional staff, firms are deploying AI to handle routine tasks, from coding to logistics, enabling existing workforces to generate exponentially more value.

This shift is historic because human limitations do not constrain AI agents. Unlike labor, which is capped by population growth, or productivity, which historically relied on tools like assembly lines, AI agents are limited only by computing power—an effectively boundless resource given ongoing advancements in hardware and cloud infrastructure. As agents evolve from “Level 1” (simple automation) to “Level 3” (autonomous, long-term task management) by 2027-2030, they could perform as reliably as humans across diverse domains. This scalability means economies can grow faster than ever before, untethered from traditional constraints.

For investors, this is a clarion call. Companies leveraging AI—such as Microsoft, Salesforce, and NVIDIA—are already experiencing margin expansion and revenue growth, which is driving stock price appreciation. The productivity surge mirrors transformative innovations, such as Ford’s assembly line, which fueled economic booms and market rallies.

As AI adoption accelerates, firms that integrate agents effectively will likely outperform those that lag, risking obsolescence. Moreover, the potential for AI to create new industries—much like the Internet gave rise to e-commerce and social media—suggests opportunities for exponential returns. Elon Musk’s vision of a “future of abundance” is not hyperbole; it’s a glimpse of an economy where growth is no longer bound by human labor, promising a new era of prosperity and investment potential.

Conclusion

The Q3 2025 earnings calls paint a vivid picture of a world in transformation. AI agents are not just tools; they are catalysts for a new economic paradigm, automating routine tasks, amplifying human productivity, and redefining how businesses operate. From Klarna’s lean efficiency to UPS’s cost savings, the evidence is clear: AI is driving historic productivity gains, reshaping workforces, and unlocking unprecedented growth potential. As we stand on the cusp of this AI-driven revolution, the implications for economies and investments are profound. Businesses and investors who embrace this shift will shape and benefit from a future where abundance is not just possible but inevitable, marking this as one of the most transformative moments in economic history.

Schorn Wealth, LLC believes all information in this report to be accurate, but we do not guarantee its accuracy. None of the information in this report or any opinions expressed constitutes a solicitation of the purchase or sale of any securities or commodities. This report is not personalized advice. Investors should do their own research and/or work with an investment professional when making portfolio decisions. As always, the past performance of any investment is not a guarantee of future results. Investors cannot invest directly in an index. Schorn Wealth's representatives or clients may have positions in securities discussed or mentioned in its published content.