AI will cause a lot of disruption in traditional career paths, but Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban has some advice on how young graduates can thrive in the age of AI.
The billionaire entrepreneur and investor, speaking on a recent podcast, drew from his decades of experience navigating technological revolutions to offer guidance for the next generation. Cuban, who made his fortune in the early days of personal computing and internet technology, sees AI as the most transformative technology shift of his career—and he believes young people have a unique window of opportunity to capitalize on it.
“I’ve been through every single technology event and evolution, and this blows them all away,” Cuban said. “Now how you implement it in business is a whole different issue.”
The comparison to his early career was particularly striking. Cuban recalled his experience at age 24, when he was introducing personal computers to businesses for the first time. “I was walking into companies who had never seen a PC before in their lives and explaining to them the value and having these guys going, ‘Well, son, I got this receptionist right there. I got that secretary. I’m never gonna need that shit ever,'” he said. “But then my business was helping them figure out how to implement it to give them an advantage.”
Cuban sees history repeating itself with AI, but on a much larger scale. “There are going to be integrators, particularly young kids—when I’m telling my kids who are 15, 18, 21, and kids going to school, ‘What should I do? What should I do?’—I’d be like, learn how to implement AI in companies,” he explained. “Because companies don’t understand how to implement all that right now to get a competitive advantage.”
He pointed to recent statements from Microsoft leadership suggesting a fundamental shift in how software will work. “You got the head of Microsoft saying software is dead because everything’s gonna be customized to your unique utilization or usage. Who’s gonna do it for them, particularly small to medium-sized businesses?”
The scale of the opportunity, according to Cuban, is enormous. “There are 33 million companies in this country. 30 million of them are solopreneurs, single person enterprises. There are millions of companies that have 5-500 people that aren’t gonna have AI budgets, aren’t gonna have AI experts. This is where kids getting hired coming out of college are really gonna have a unique opportunity.”
Cuban’s advice was specific and actionable. “If you’re spending your senior year in college right now, your senior year in high school even, whatever it is your excess time, and you’re learning the difference between Sora and other tools, and you’re learning how to do all this video, you’re learning how to customize a model so that you can then walk into a company and say, ‘I understand your business as a shoe company selling shoes at a retail store, selling shoes online. Let me show you how to benefit you’—that is every single job that’s gonna be available for kids coming out of school because every single company needs that. There is nothing intuitive for a company to integrate AI.”
Cuban’s perspective aligns with broader trends in the AI adoption landscape. Recent surveys show that while over 70% of executives view AI as critical to their business strategy, fewer than 25% have successfully implemented AI solutions at scale. The gap between AI’s potential and its practical implementation represents a massive market opportunity—one that doesn’t necessarily require a computer science degree but rather a combination of technical literacy and business acumen. Companies from accounting firms to retail chains are discovering that their biggest AI challenge isn’t accessing the technology—it’s figuring out how to apply it to their specific workflows and customer needs. For young graduates willing to position themselves as AI implementation specialists, Cuban’s message is clear: the opportunity isn’t just coming—it’s already here.