Axios C-Suite: Building and exercising an AI-powered version of you

• A CEO agent can give you superpowers, like exploring ideas and even designing new business lines yourself. And it can provide highly tailored intelligence reports on competitors or your own micro-passions.

💡 How I did it: I loaded every speech, internal memo, column and TV appearance of mine into both ChatGPT and Claude to create JimGPT.

• The models write in Axios style and in my voice — tight, punchy sentences, data-based answers — whenever I ask.

How you can do it: Upload your own writing into a Claude project or custom GPT. Then set instructions for tone, length and style. The more you feed it, the better it gets.

The key insight: Don't ask the AI to go find your voice. Give it your voice. The CEO who uploads 50 documents gets a 10x better clone than the one who types a few simple prompts.

⏱️ The bottom line: I got JimGPT rocking in an hour or so. Overnight, you can have a bionic YOU.

Exercising the AI-powered version of you

Try these four use cases — no tech team required.

• None will be perfect. But they'll help you fine-tune your prompts. Once you get the prompt right, you can cut and paste it whenever you want to use it or ask the AI to save it under a specific name in its memory.

1. Run a premortem on your next big decision. Before you green-light a deal, launch or reorg, stress-test it with AI the way you'd stress-test it with your best board member — except this one has no political agenda or institutional bias.

• Try this prompt: "I'm the CEO of a [X]-person company in [industry]. We're about to [decision]. Play devil's advocate. Give me the five strongest arguments this will fail, based on highly reputable data and sources only. Identify what I'm likely not seeing because of confirmation bias. Be blunt and be prescriptive. Then tell me what you'd do instead."

2. Build yourself a weekly briefing. Most CEOs get information filtered through layers — or the eyes of someone not operating at their level. Cut through it.

• Try this prompt: "I am the CEO of [a few sentences describing your company and competitive position]. I need the most useful and insightful briefing about my industry, fine-tuned for peak relevance to my company. Give me the five most important developments over the past six days ranked by impact on me and my business. Use only reputable sources and cite the source and provide a direct link after each. Write it bluntly and clinically."

3. Turn a vague instinct into a testable thesis. CEOs often sense something is shifting — a market, a competitor, a customer behavior — but don't have the data team's bandwidth to explore it. AI is your first-pass analyst.

• Try this prompt: "I have a hunch that [trend/shift] is taking place. Knowing I am the CEO of [company] in [industry], give me the five data points or signals I should look for to confirm or kill this theory, and suggest the cheapest way to test it this quarter. End by telling me an adjacent idea I am missing or underappreciating."

4. Use game theory on AI's impact on YOU. Truth is, you're lucky if 1% of your company is truly AI-smart-and-sophisticated. Most aren't. Don't wait for someone to tell you what AI might do to your company. Ask the AI yourself. You can create a weekly AI intelligence report for YOU.

• Try this prompt: "I am the CEO of [a few sentences describing your company, its size and business model]. I need the smartest, most clinical understanding of how AI will impact me personally and my company broadly. Write me a five-item newsletter in Axios style on the most important things happening this week in AI or adjacent tech that you believe will have the greatest impact on me and my company. Include a 'why it matters to me' summary at the end of each item."

📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Sign up now to join Jim's new Axios C-Suite weekly newsletter.