What AI professionals value in 42 students

AI is reshaping the tech industry at remarkable speed, changing not only the tools people use but also the skills companies value. For 42 students, that raises a practical question: which qualities matter most in a field that is evolving so quickly? To find out, we spoke with people working directly in AI, from founders and employers to 42 Alumni.


We started with Thomas Jacobsen, Chief Communication and Marketing Officer at Infomaniak, the company behind SwissTransfer and the sovereign AI agent Euria. Infomaniak sits at the forefront of AI innovation and also works closely with 42 Lausanne, hiring several of its students over the years. Drawing on that experience, Jacobsen was adamant that 42 students are well equipped for an AI-driven world and all its uncertainties. “42 students are very resourceful. They’re autonomous self-learners. That’s exactly what we need in our field, because everything evolves constantly, even more so with AI.”

Thomas Jacobsen, CMO of Infomaniak (Euria).

Next, we spoke with Muhammad Khalid, Founder and CEO of AIREV, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company behind School Hack and OnDemand, platforms with a combined global user base in the millions. He told us how a hackathon at 42 Abu Dhabi grew into a lasting partnership, and why the school’s free, peer-to-peer model produces exactly the kind of talent the AI sector needs. “42 students approached challenges in ways we hadn’t seen before, and what they shipped in such a short time was remarkable,” he said, still visibly impressed. Later, he put it even more directly: “42 produces exactly the type of talent the AI industry needs right now: self-driven problem solvers who think differently.”

Emmanuel Dollé, president & co-founder of Bubbling, a MarTech company that analyzes how conversational AIs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, and Perplexity talk about brands, contacted us after hiring a former 42 student as Tech Lead. “After fifteen years spent recruiting engineers at Google & Meta, I can tell without a doubt: what [students develop] at 42 (autonomy, rigor, and agency) is precisely what we look for in candidates.”

Muhammad Khalid (left), CEO of AIREV, along with 42 Abu Dhabi students and his excellency Dr Ahmed Al-Shoaibi (right), undersecretary of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

Finally, it’s not only partners and employers who see it. 42 Alumni prove it from the inside. Pierre-Edouard Lieb, a 42 Paris Alumnus, now works as a Go-to-Market Lead at OpenAI. At our latest Alumni Fireside Chat, he shared his perspective on what it takes to keep up in AI: “Everything is changing so fast, especially at OpenAI or other AI labs. If you don’t know how to adapt, you can’t survive. So 42 students’ ability to learn without a teacher is essential.”

AI is moving fast, and it’s easy to get swept up in the anxiety and the headlines about engineers becoming obsolete overnight. But talk to the people actually building it, and a different picture emerges. Few of them are worried about being outpaced by AI. What they care about is whether someone can keep learning when the ground shifts again. And it always does.