Taming the AI Gold Rush: Portfolio Management, Demand Funnels, and the Governance Gap - Darren Wilmhurst

Hosted by Alex Birke (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbirke/), live from the SAFe & AI Summit 2026 in Amsterdam, this episode of Agile Amped features Darren Wilmhurst, Managing Director for Europe at Cprime, SAFe SPCT, and author of the SAFe Coach's Handbook. Every organization Darren works with shares the same pattern: more demand than capacity, prioritization driven by opinion rather than economics, and a strategy that can't be connected to execution. None of this is new but the AI gold rush is flooding an already overloaded demand funnel with a wave of new initiatives that are often started bottom-up, without governance, guardrails, or any clear link to a real business problem. Darren's practical response: recognize the actual problem first, then examine what belongs in the demand funnel. Build an economic prioritization framework using cost of delay rather than opinion. Invest in tooling that connects portfolio visibility to team-level execution because large organizations managing portfolio epics in spreadsheets are one data breach away from a serious governance failure. For AI experiments specifically, the Horizon model offers a structured answer: Horizon Zero funds legacy decommissioning, Horizon One protects core products, Horizon Three provides seed funding for time-boxed experiments, and Horizon Two commercializes whatever proves its legs but only one or two at a time. As Geoffrey Moore put it: a hen can only lay one egg at a time. His final advice: don't try to boil the ocean. Pick one portfolio, run a vertical slice from strategy to team level, prove it out, and grow from there. Leaders who aren't educating themselves on AI risks and governance frameworks now will find themselves consumed by the very wave they're trying to ride. Connect with Darren Wilmhurst: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-wilmshurst/ • Website: https://www.cprime.com/