On November 20, 2025, Zapier hosted a public town hall-style meeting titled “Zapier’s Public All Hands: 2026 AI Transformation Strategy” I expected cool demos of automated workflows (and there were a couple), demos of new features, and other productivity builders that I could share with my audience. Instead, they reviewed their well structured AI Transformation strategy in detail and I found myself writing an article with much higher value.
What is Zapier and What Does it Do?
For those of you not familiar, Zapier is a company that provides a no-code automation platform that allows users to connect different applications, and automate workflows, without writing a single line of code. Here are a few things you can use Zapier for:
- Use it to send data via Gmail to a specific Google Sheet in Google Drive.
- Send a registered user to Mailchimp or your CRM system when they register via a third-party form builder.
- Send Gmail notifications to Slack for your sales team.
- Create automated nurture campaigns to build your audience or increase sales.
- Many other solid business use cases.
What does Your AI Transformation Strategy Look Like?
More than likely, you don’t have one yet and you’re not alone. You might have a few AI-fluent people at your company who have done some great things with AI tools, a few who are building prompt libraries for different applications, and maybe even 75% to 85% of your team uses ChatGPT to ask questions, run through scenarios, act as a sounding board, etc.
That’s not a strategy; that is early-stage AI adoption. What I thought was so valuable about the Zapier event is that they not only went through their 2026 AI Transformation strategy, but they showed those in attendance what they’ve done over the past few years to set the stage for it.
Zapier’s AI Transformation Wake Up Call
ChatGPT-4 came out in March of 2023, only six months after the release of version 3.5, and both the accuracy and conversational nature of the AI model were significantly improved. According to Wade Foster, co-Founder and CEO of Zapier, that was their wake-up call. That’s when they realized they were in a race to compete in an AI-first world. That’s when they started planning their AI transformation and encouraging employees to adopt AI and called a ‘code red,’ meaning that all employees needed to start paying attention to and adopting AI into their workflows.
Nearly all of their people are adopting AI. They believe that adoption has greatly impacted Zapier’s ability to not only increase customer satisfaction and make things more efficient, but also to enhance employee satisfaction by making their jobs more fulfilling. It’s also a differentiator in the marketplace.
They started experimenting with AI during companywide hackathons, which they have every few months, and they believe that’s really done a lot to increase their capabilities as an organization. Using AI in a thoughtful way has also opened new types of work, new problems they are able to solve and new customer opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
How does Zapier define AI Transformation?
Zapier’s definition is as follows ‘It’s the organizational shift that reinvents how work gets done to deliver measurable business impact – including entirely new business models.’ While AI adoption is more focused on marginal improvements to individual productivity and skill building, AI Transformation has a greater focus on rethinking the core business and reconsiders how work can be done altogether, from sales to customer support to recruiting and talent development. These are the areas of focus for 2026 and beyond.
Zapier’s AI Transformation Framework Measures Impact
Everything they are doing is centered around the impact those changes will make for their customers. Zapier considers the following four key ingredients necessary to get them there.
- Leadership – Leadership sets the vision and urgency for AI transformation.
- Talent and Culture – The company fosters an environment of AI fluency and experimentation.
- Tools – Zapier equips their teams with the right technology stack and data required to get the job done.
- Governance – This provides the guardrails for safe, scalable adoption.
Leadership and talent and culture are about their people, while tools and governance are centered around the different technologies, vendors, policy and governance required. They are all important, but Zapier weighs the people side of the equation equally with all of the other requirements. Their goal is not only to increase company capabilities and drive efficiency but to make the work more meaningful and enjoyable.
When trying to transform workflows, most companies start with the technologies. The people side doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Zapier does this by investing in their people through training. Also, all new hires are now evaluated for AI fluency during the hiring process. This is a trend we’ll see more of as companies transform around AI.
AI Transformation Challenges and Opportunities
Incorporating AI into the fabric of everything your company does is no small undertaking. But one challenge that can get overlooked is how to account for AI in the budgeting process so the costs associated with that transformation are accounted for in advance.
Talent is also a challenge. In addition to continuing to encourage the development of those skill sets internally, Zapier is also hiring for specialized expertise in several areas, and AI specialists are in high demand in today’s job market. To develop internally, they’ve created (ERGs) Employee Resource Groups centered around AI skill building.
The third major challenge has been the tools. There are countless AI tools and vendors out there, and figuring out which ones are the right for the business can be overwhelming.
Zapier’s 2026 AI Transformation Plans
They’ve identified two key initiatives that they are betting will lead to tenfold team productivity and customer outcomes.
- The Zapier “digital twin” – They plan to boost the productivity of every employee by providing them with knowledge operations agents. In the first quarter, they’ll be piloting the first of these, focused on customer support by providing each team member an AI agent trained on company- and role-specific data.
- AI-powered value engineering – Through talent development and AI tools, they aim to empower their team to identify customer value drivers and identify how Zapier can increase those outcomes. The goal is to make sure everyone in the organization can have a meaningful conversation with a customer and provide concrete recommendations based on that discussion.
AI Transformation Scorecard
The only way to gauge effectiveness of any initiative is to measure it. Zapier shared how they do this via their AI Transformation scorecard. The scorecard independently evaluates those same four pillars identified earlier: leadership, talent and culture, tools and governance.
They’ll be using this scorecard to measure meaningful AI impact via the two plans above; the digital twin and value engineering. They’ll also use it to evaluate staffing requirements and training needs.
AI Transformation Internal Champions
Each pillar has an internal champion ensuring AI transformation is implemented in their area of the business. In addition, each team needs to have four core capabilities
- AI transformation manager – This capability role is similar to a team captain and is responsible for staffing all other capabilities. They also make sure each project produces measurable business impact.
- AI fluency champion – This person helps the team use AI as a part of their everyday workload.
- AI automation engineer – The engineer translates ideas into outcomes by rapidly prototyping and scaling solutions.
- AI innovation lead – This is the explorer who pilots emerging AI tools and models and determine whether they redefine the way Zapier works.
What can Media Businesses Learn from Zapier?
A lot of businesses out there are trying to figure out what their own AI transformation should look like. Generalities in Zapier’s framework can be adapted for media companies and others.
- Start with AI adoption. Find out how your team is using AI tools today and identify who is more advanced and who is lagging.
- Create a culture of AI adoption and integration. Showcase your internal AI leaders’ best practices and provide educational materials for those employees who are lagging.
- Identify the pillars of your AI transformation strategy. Leadership, talent and culture, tools and governance are a great place to start.
- Identify AI specialization gaps and hire for those roles. Develop talent internally where possible.
- Ensure each pillar is measured and supported. Zapier’s capability roles offer a good starting point.
What I thought was the most valuable about Zapier’s approach is that while many media businesses might be exploring how they can use AI technologies to automate workflows and eliminate jobs, companies like Zapier are investing in their people to make them more efficient, more valuable, and more satisfied while maximizing results for their customers.
AI, when used effectively, isn’t a replacement for humans, it increases human capabilities. When that happens, the entire organization gets better, and customers see the value. The media companies that will thrive in an AI-driven world will be the ones that get this right.
