Category: Blog & News

From Human Factors to Agentic AI: Designing the Next Layer of Enterprise Intelligence

Week 23 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition shifts the lens once again, this time toward the intersection of human judgment, intelligent systems, and emerging AI paradigms. If last week was about scaling data into enterprise capability, this week explores how that capability becomes adaptive, contextual, and increasingly autonomous. 

New (Keynote) Speakers and Sessions

This week’s update is led by a major keynote addition, and a familiar face to the fans of the event: Stephen Brobst, Chief Technology Officer at Ab Initio Software, who will take the stage with “Enabling the Future with Agentic AI.” The session will explore how autonomous AI agents are set to redefine enterprise workflows, decision-making, and the way intelligent systems are designed and deployed at scale. 

Another important keynote update comes from Databricks, with David Meyer, SVP Product Management, stepping in to present “The role of AI in changing company structures and dynamics.” This session shifts the focus from technology alone to organizational transformation, highlighting how AI is reshaping operating models, team structures, and decision-making processes across the enterprise.

Building on this forward-looking theme, Kristof Neys, Graph Data Science Director at Neo4j, explores “The Architecture of ‘Why’: Building Context Graphs for Agentic RAG,” highlighting how context and relationships underpin trustworthy, explainable AI systems, while Amir Vashkover, Head of Data Security at Philips, brings a critical human perspective in “The Human Factor: The Weakest Link or Strongest Defense?”, emphasizing that people remain both the biggest risk and strongest safeguard. Expanding into creativity and product innovation, Linus Gisslén of SEED (Electronic Arts) examines AI as an experience in “What if AI was playable?”, Mikael Andersson of Nextory shares practical lessons from building personalized recommendations over time, and Furkan Aral of Hyundai Motor Company demonstrates how AI-driven systems are transforming enterprise data intelligence and enabling continuous innovation.

Across the program, a strong emphasis continues on translating infrastructure into tangible business outcomes. Sessions from Lenovo highlight how advanced inferencing is already delivering value at global scale, while collaborations between Astrafy, Fieldstream and Google Cloud demonstrate how modern data platforms are being rebuilt to support exponential growth and AI adoption. At the same time, Nextcloud brings a resilience perspective by addressing how to secure the digital workspace in times of uncertainty, and Coop showcases AskCAP, an internal AI companion integrated into everyday workflows via Databricks and Microsoft Teams. Additional perspectives from Dael Williamson (Databricks) and Linda Kinnunen (Apoteket) further ground the discussion in real-world experience, focusing on how organizations are operationalizing data intelligence across domains.

The summit continues to strengthen its leadership layer with new Roundtable moderators, with Juha Vesanto (OP Pohjola), Winfried Adalbert Etzel (Winfried Etzel AS), and Altaf Patel (PepsiCo) who will conduct expert-led discussions across key topics in data, AI, and governance.

New Partners

Week 23 also welcomes Siemens as a new partner, alongside H&M and Traton joining as supporting partners, further strengthening the summit’s connection to industrial, retail, and manufacturing ecosystems where AI adoption continues to accelerate.

What becomes increasingly clear is that the conversation is no longer just about building AI, it’s about designing systems where humans, data, and intelligent agents continuously interact. From the human factor in security to agentic architectures and AI-driven creativity, the focus is shifting toward systems that are not only scalable, but adaptive, contextual, and deeply embedded into how organizations think and operate.

More updates next week
The Data Innovation Team

From Data Powerhouses to Enterprise AI Impact

Week 22 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition brings forward a different perspective on scale, less about infrastructure alone, and more about how organizations evolve, operationalize, and extract real value from data and AI. The spotlight shifts toward transformation journeys, semantic foundations, and enterprise-wide adoption, highlighting what it takes to turn data into a core business capability rather than a supporting function.

New Speakers and Sessions

A standout addition this week is “From Hitman to Bond: Turning IOI into an Analytics Powerhouse”, presented by Rasmus Smedegaard (Head of Operations) and Héctor Pérez Martínez (Head of BI) at IO Interactive. As the company expands from a single-franchise studio into a global organization managing multiple large-scale productions, this session explores how data becomes essential in navigating complexity and enabling growth. 

Another important addition to the program is Yasmeen Ahmad, Managing Director of Data at Google Cloud, joining as a keynote speaker in the Data Café stage. With a background spanning life sciences research and large-scale AI innovation, Yasmeen brings a unique perspective on how organizations rethink their data and analytics strategies to drive transformation. Her session will be announced soon.

Strengthening the AI leadership perspective, Max Tschochohei, Director of Customer Engineering for the AI Practice at Google Cloud, joins the lineup. Working closely with enterprise customers across EMEA, Max focuses on turning AI ambition into execution, with expertise across AI infrastructure, operating models, and mission-critical deployments. His session details will follow shortly.

On the architecture side, “The Perfect Data Product: How Alliander Built an Enterprise Context Layer with Atlan” dives into one of the most pressing challenges in AI today—context. Ruud van Beusekom and Patrick Beitsma from Alliander share how their organization built over 400 data products and enabled faster data discovery by embedding metadata, relationships, and semantics directly into their ecosystem. 

The evolution of analytics interfaces is addressed in “Text2SQL: From Academic Benchmarks to Self-Service Analytics” by Rauf Kurbanov, ML Team Lead at JetBrains. Moving beyond lab performance, the session explores how Text-to-SQL systems mature in real-world environments, emphasizing semantic layers, feedback loops, and guardrails that make self-service analytics trustworthy for business users.

Enterprise-wide AI adoption takes center stage in “Scaling Generative AI Across Functions from Early Adopters to Enterprise Impact” by Tommie Hallin, Chief Architect Data Services at IBM Consulting EMEA. The session focuses on how organizations can deliver business context and semantics to AI agents, ensuring that autonomous workflows operate with the right understanding to create measurable value.

Addressing one of the fastest-growing areas in enterprise AI, “The Sovereign AI Rush: Launch High-Margin ‘Chat-with-Your-Data’ Services in Days” by Ole Petter Johnsen of Cloudian explores how organizations can deploy secure, on-premises generative AI services. The session highlights how sovereign AI infrastructure enables compliance, reduces complexity, and accelerates time-to-value without requiring in-house model development.

In addition to the speaker lineup, the summit also welcomes Louise Vanerell, Transformation & AI Adoption Expert at Recursive Future, as a new moderator. With a strong focus on people-centered transformation, Louise brings a practical perspective on how organizations navigate change, align teams, and make AI adoption sustainable.

New Partners

Week 22 also expands the summit ecosystem with the addition of Percona, Reaktor, Immuta, PingCAP and DataMasters as partners, alongside Lerøy Seafood Group joining as a supporting partner. Their participation further strengthens the dialogue around modern data infrastructure, governance, and enterprise AI adoption.

Across this week’s updates, a clear pattern emerges: success with AI is no longer defined by isolated innovation, but by how well organizations integrate data, context, and systems into their core operations. From building analytics-driven companies to enabling autonomous workflows and sovereign AI services, the focus is on creating durable capabilities that scale with the business.

More updates are on the way next week
The Data Innovation Team

Scaling Systems, Governing AI, and Designing Data for Real-World Impact

Week 21 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition highlights the operational side of modern AI and data systems. As organizations push beyond experimentation, new questions are emerging around infrastructure scale, enforceable governance, production-ready datasets, and architectures capable of supporting autonomous AI-driven workflows. Across this week’s sessions, speakers explore what it actually takes to move from promising prototypes to robust systems that operate reliably at scale.

New Speakers and Sessions

One of the most technically focused sessions announced this week comes from Nouamane Tazi, ML Research Engineer at Hugging Face, with “The Ultra-Scale Talk: Scaling Training to Thousands of GPUs.” As foundation models continue to grow in size and complexity, the infrastructure required to train them is becoming a discipline of its own. This session explores the engineering strategies behind large-scale distributed training, including advanced parallelism techniques, network optimization, and fault tolerance mechanisms required to keep massive GPU clusters running efficiently.

The challenge of bringing AI from isolated experiments into enterprise-wide production environments is addressed by Nick Jewell, Senior Sales Engineer at Dataiku, in “From PoC to Production – Scaling Enterprise AI for Measurable Value.” While many organizations have successfully built AI prototypes, far fewer have achieved consistent results at scale. 

Data engineering architectures are also evolving to support more autonomous systems. In “Engineering for Autonomy: Low-ETL, Open Formats, and the Return of the Semantic Layer,” Will Martin, Evangelist EMEA at Dremio, explores how modern data platforms can reduce complexity while increasing flexibility.

Another critical dimension of operational AI is governance. Awadelrahman M. A. Ahmed, Data & AI Architect at REMA 1000, joins the program with “Designing AI Governance That Systems Can Enforce.” Rather than relying solely on policies and guidelines, the session examines how governance mechanisms can be embedded directly into AI systems themselves. 

The importance of high-quality data foundations is addressed by Agnieszka Pruszek, Senior Project Manager at Samsung R&D Poland, in “Design and Production of Multimodal Datasets for Reliable Health and Wellness Applications.” The session presents an end-to-end framework for collecting and integrating complex multimodal data sources, including wearable sensors, voice signals, and eye-tracking data. A longitudinal study involving dementia patients illustrates the practical challenges and insights involved in building reliable datasets for real-world health applications.

Industry practitioners are also sharing how data teams evolve as organizations mature. In “Beyond the ‘Quick Data Pull’: Architecting Action in Circular Fashion,” Wouter Nijdam and Liubov Zevaeva from Otrium discuss how their data team transitioned from reactive reporting to building AI-enabled systems that support strategic decision-making.

Finally, this week also introduces a Chief Data Officer Executive Round Table, moderated by Dr. Chris Hillman, Global AI Lead at Teradata. The discussion will bring together senior data leaders to examine how organizations design data ecosystems that encourage collaboration, innovation, and responsible AI development across departments and partners.

New Partners

Week 21 also welcomes several new organizations joining the growing Data Innovation Summit ecosystem. We are pleased to welcome Giskard, SambaNova and SelectZero as partners supporting this year’s edition and contributing to the ongoing dialogue around enterprise AI, data platforms, and advanced analytics.

Taken together, this week’s announcements emphasize a broader industry transition: from isolated AI initiatives to integrated, production-grade systems that reshape how organizations operate, collaborate, and generate value from data.

Stay tuned for more announcements next week.
The Data Innovation Team

Signals, Semantics and the Organizational Shift of AI

Week 20 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition focuses on a new set of questions emerging as AI becomes embedded in the fabric of organizations: how companies detect future technologies earlier, how data systems evolve to understand meaning rather than just structure, and how enterprises redesign their internal models to operate in an AI-augmented world.

New Keynotes, Speakers and Sessions

One of the highlights of this week’s announcement is the keynote session from Dael Williamson, Field CTO at Databricks, titled “The Role of AI in Changing Company Structures and Dynamics.” Drawing on several years of research into highly AI-driven organizations, the talk examines how the growing presence of AI agents is reshaping internal workflows, decision structures, and growth strategies. Rather than theoretical predictions, the session is grounded in real-world behavioral data and adoption patterns, offering a forward-looking perspective on how organizations evolve when employees collaborate not just with tools, but with entire fleets of AI agents.

The challenge of identifying the next technological breakthrough is explored in “How Do You Find the Next Big Technology? AI, Knowledge Graphs and Weak Signals,” presented by Victoria Palacin and Carolyn Cole from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The session introduces advanced methods for technology foresight developed by VTT’s QSTS team, combining large-scale data analysis, knowledge graphs, and large language models to detect early signals of emerging innovation. 

Another session addressing the future of data systems comes from Laura Malins, Head of Product at Sifflet, with “The Context Crisis: Why Your Data Stack Understands Syntax But Not Semantics.” While modern infrastructures can process massive data volumes and support advanced analytics, they often struggle to capture the real-world meaning behind the data. This talk introduces the concept of semantic context in data observability, exploring how context graphs can bridge the gap between technical signals and business impact. 

The evolution of enterprise data architecture is also addressed by Roland Wammers, Field Architect at MinIO, in “One Store to Rule Them All: Building a Sovereign AI Data Foundation That Delivers Results.” As many organizations push forward with ambitious AI strategies, fragmented data infrastructures often become the primary barrier to scaling. This session explores how a unified, sovereignty-first data architecture built around object-native lakehouse principles can support regulatory requirements, reduce operational complexity, and enable AI initiatives to move from experimentation to measurable value.

Generative AI continues to reshape how organizations work with data as well. Ericka Johnson, Professor and Founder of Fair AI Data, joins the program with “GenAI Synthetic Tabular Data – Variations vs Ontologies.” The session examines how synthetic data generation is evolving and how ontological approaches can provide stronger structure and interpretability for AI-driven data creation.

Collaboration and governance remain essential themes across the Summit tracks. Joel Vanhalakka from Solita joins the Data Office panel discussion, “How Can Organizations Move from Readiness to Measurable Business Impact with Data and AI?” The panel explores how companies transition from capability building toward delivering tangible value from data and AI initiatives.

New Partners

Week 20 also welcomes several new organizations joining the DIS26 partner ecosystem. We are pleased to welcome EY, Oracle and Ubitec as new partners supporting this year’s Summit and contributing to the growing community around enterprise data, analytics and AI innovation.

Week 20 highlights a broader shift in the conversation around AI. The focus is no longer only on models or tools, but on the deeper systems that make them effective: the ability to interpret context in data, detect signals of future innovation, and redesign organizations to operate in an AI-driven environment.

More announcements are coming next week.

The Data Innovation Team

Collaboration, Trusted Data and the Next Phase of Operational AI

Week 19 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition shifts the spotlight to collaboration, trust, and operational maturity in data and AI systems. From national-scale innovation and industrial AI foundations to real-time data pipelines, governance transparency, and autonomous operations, the new sessions announced this week explore how organizations move from experimentation to durable capability.

New Keynotes, Speakers and Sessions

The highlight of the week is the opening Future Outlook Keynote, featuring Anders Ynnerman, Executive Chairman of Sferical AI and Director of Strategic Research at the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. In a dialogue moderated by Anders Arpteg, VP AI & Data at Saab Group, the session explores how large-scale collaboration and collective intelligence are becoming essential to accelerate innovation. The session sets the tone for the Summit by emphasizing a critical premise: in an era of exponential change, progress cannot happen in isolation, so the fastest way to innovate is to share the journey.

From the world of media and storytelling, Matthias Stahl, Head of Data & Visualizations at Der SPIEGEL, joins the program with From Data to Deadline: How We Built and Run a Data & Visualizations Team in the Newsroom. The session offers a behind-the-scenes look at how a 23-person interdisciplinary team combines data journalism, design, and engineering to deliver impactful stories under newsroom deadlines while still investing in long-term tools and innovation, including AI-supported workflows.

On the public-sector digital infrastructure field, Janne Lautanala, Chief Ecosystem and Technology Officer at Fintraffic, presents From Open Traffic Data to Operational AI: How Fintraffic Builds Public Value at National Scale. The talk outlines how Finland’s national traffic operator evolved from publishing open datasets to building an operational ecosystem that enables real-time decision-making, digital services, and AI-ready capabilities across transport systems.

Cybersecurity and regulation are also increasingly intertwined with AI adoption. Per Myrseth, Senior Researcher in Cyber Security at DNV, will present AI-empowered Cyber Security Risk Management and Certification. Drawing on insights from EU-funded research projects, the session explores how AI can strengthen DevSecOps practices while helping organizations prepare for compliance with emerging frameworks such as the Cyber Resilience Act and the EU AI Act.

Understanding data at scale remains a central challenge for large technology platforms. In How Meta Understands Data at Scale, Vasileios Lakafosis and Dave Kurtzberg, Software Engineers at Meta, share how Meta’s Privacy Aware Infrastructure integrates schematization, annotation, and a universal privacy taxonomy early in the product development lifecycle. 

Several sessions this week focus on the foundations required to support trustworthy AI systems. Adam Segal from Cloudera explores why data lineage has become a governance requirement rather than a technical feature in AI is Accelerating Enterprise Decisions. Regulatory Scrutiny is Accelerating Faster. On the data architecture front, Antti Kajala, CIO at WiseDigi Oy, discusses how Finnish energy company Pohjolan Voima is preparing for AI with a high-quality data platform. Another emerging theme this week is how generative AI is reshaping data engineering workflows. Tamara Tatian, EMEA Technical Leader and Architect at IBM Data Platform, tackles this in Vibe Coding and VibeOps – Enterprise DataOps Heaven or Hell?. The session examines whether new paradigms enabled by generative AI represent an opportunity for faster development or introduce new operational complexity for enterprise-grade DataOps.

The evolution from pilots to real-world production remains one of the most pressing challenges for AI leaders. In Random Acts of AI: Moving from Pilots to Production, Dr. Chris Hillman, Global AI Lead at Teradata, outlines how enterprises can shift from isolated experiments toward coordinated roadmaps that deliver measurable business outcomes within complex environments.

Operational AI also depends on real-time infrastructure. Gregor Bauer, VP Customer Engineering at CrateDB, presents Architecting Real-Time Data Pipelines: Turning Sensor Streams into Dashboards, demonstrating how modern streaming architectures transform high-velocity IoT data into actionable operational insights.

Similarly focused on operational systems, Somil Gupta, Co-Founder of Kovant, introduces the concept of Operations 5.0, where autonomous AI agents plan, adapt, and execute tasks across real business processes. The session explores how agentic systems differ from traditional automation and what organizations need to adopt them successfully.

Several sessions address the growing importance of trusted data as the foundation for AI reliability. Christian Stadlmann, Chief Revenue Officer at One Data, explains why technical data quality alone is not enough in Data Quality Is Not Enough: Stop AI Hallucinations with Trusted Data. In another session from One Data, Tim Föckersperger explores how organizations can move Beyond Migration when modernizing SAP BW, transforming legacy environments into future-ready data foundations that support AI-driven decision making. The transition toward agentic AI also places new demands on data infrastructure. Arjan Hijstek, Solution Architect at ClickHouse, discusses how next-generation analytics platforms can deliver the speed, concurrency, and scale required to power agentic systems in When Data Starts Acting: Speed, Scale and Simplicity for Agentic AI.

Industry collaboration stories also take center stage this week. In Finding the Right Chemistry: Combining Domain Expertise, Data & MLOps Across Borders, Nicola Holmes from Kemira and Janne Sipilä from Twoday discuss how multinational teams align domain expertise and data engineering practices to build scalable AI initiatives despite complex data environments.

The finance sector contributes another strong example of data product thinking. André Westerlund from Handelsbanken IT and Frej Örnberg from Handelsbanken Fonder present Handelsbanken Pension Fund: 10x Faster Data Products by Redesigning Data Delivery. Their session describes how shifting from point integrations to reusable data services significantly accelerated reporting and analytics while maintaining strict governance requirements.

Healthcare data transformation is also featured this week. Henry De Rudder, Head of Data, AI & IT at Ceres Pharma, shares how the organization unified 23 entities, five ERP systems, and multiple acquisitions into a single governed data layer within a year, enabling secure self-service analytics across the business.

Finally, several additional speakers join the program across the Summit tracks, including Jon Palmer (Field CTO at Omni), Dr. Christopher Royles (CTO EMEA at Cloudera), Claudia Chiţu (Engineering Manager at Arrive / EasyPark Group), and Gudrun Anna Atladottir from Novo Nordisk together with Rajesh Ananth from EPAM. Their sessions will further expand the conversation on enterprise analytics, AI readiness, and modern data platforms.

New Partners

Week 19 also brings several new organizations into the DIS26 ecosystem, further strengthening the community around enterprise data and AI innovation. We welcome Validio, Astrafy, ConfidentialMind, Aiven, JetBrains, ThoughtSpot and Sigma as new partners supporting this year’s Summit.

Week 19 highlights a clear theme: the next generation of AI systems will not be built on models alone. They require trusted data foundations, transparent governance, real-time infrastructure, and above all, collaboration across organizations and industries.

More announcements are coming next week

The Data Innovation Team

From Foundations to Value: Designing Data and AI That Actually Hold Up

Week 18 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition is all about foundations, judgment and value creation at scale: how data models evolve in the age of AI, why systems break in production, how governance must meet developers where they work, and how enterprises move from pilots to measurable returns/ 

New Keynotes, Speakers and Sessions

The major highlight of the week is a new keynote from Joe Reis, best-selling author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering (O’Reilly). In Mixed Model Arts: Data Modeling in the Age of AI, Joe challenges decades of rigid data modeling “style wars” and introduces a pragmatic, cross-disciplinary framework designed for modern AI, real-time, and unstructured workloads. The keynote reframes data modeling as a strategic capability, not a dogma, and offers battle-tested thinking for teams navigating AI-driven complexity. Joe will also lead a half-day MasterClass expanding this framework for data engineers, architects, and technical leads working across BI, AI, and real-time systems. More info here: https://datainnovationsummit.com/region/nordics/masterclass/ 

On the production reality of AI, Katsimanis Thodoris, Technology Manager for Operational & Distributed Database Systems at Kaizen Gaming, presents Why AI Systems Break in Production: From Schema Drift to Vector DB Reality. The session dissects real failure patterns seen after deployment, from training-serving mismatch and schema evolution to vector database limitations, and shows why disciplined data engineering and proactive data quality monitoring are critical to keeping AI systems reliable at scale.

Governance takes a developer-centric turn with Why DevEx is the New Face of Modern Data Governance, delivered by Reza Abedi, Senior Solution Architect for Data Governance & Architecture at Fortum. The session argues that traditional gatekeeper models no longer work in high-velocity environments and explores how policy-as-code, automation, and secure-by-design platforms can reduce friction while strengthening compliance.

On the risk and control side of AI, Vanessa Eriksson, AI and Cybersecurity Strategy Expert at Vanessa Eriksson AB, brings Delegated Authority: The Real Risk in AI. The session examines how agentic systems redistribute decision-making power inside organizations, why traditional cybersecurity language no longer fits, and how leaders must rethink intervention speed, accountability, and control.

The Executive Round Table welcomes Andreas Lundin, VP Data Engineering at H&M, as moderator for the Chief Data Officer Executive Round Table. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience building and scaling data organizations, the discussion focuses on leadership decisions that enable sustainable data and AI impact across large enterprises.

A second keynote underscores the business lens of the week. In Show me the money: Making AI Deliver Real Value, Maria Wiss, Regional Vice President at Snowflake, addresses the shift from experimentation to value realization. The session explores how organizations define measurable impact, build value measurement frameworks, and create ownership around AI outcomes rather than activity.

From industrial data to AI-ready platforms, Toyota Material Handling Manufacturing Sweden shares Architecting for AI: Migrating Industrial Telemetry to a Unified Data Platform. Nour Qweder and Hanna Häger walk through how fragmented telemetry data and Spark workloads were unified onto Snowflake using Snowpark Connect, enabling scalable AI and ML integration while simplifying architecture and operations. Industrial transformation continues with What We Changed in 12 Months: Unlocking Data Value in Industrial Operations at Volvo Cars. Christina Finlay, Global Head of Data & AI for Industrial Operations, shares how Volvo Cars moved from slow, fragmented data access to a faster, more collaborative data environment, laying the groundwork for responsible AI, computer vision, and predictive maintenance.

On strategy and ROI, Olli Kilpeläinen, Principal Consultant at Futurice, presents Scaling AI ROI through Value-Stream Alignment and Data-Enabled Strategy. The session focuses on why AI initiatives stall after proof-of-concept and how aligning AI investments with core value streams, real-time data, and economic impact unlocks sustained returns. Governance also takes a portfolio-level view in How is AI Helping with Governance, presented by Nicolas Averseng, Founder and CEO of YOOI, now part of DataGalaxy. The session explores how organizations can manage Data & AI use cases centrally to demonstrate value, govern risk, ensure compliance, and optimize cost.

Finally, data quality comes into focus with From Raw Data to Trusted Decisions: Building Data Quality at Global Scale, where Paul Fulton, VP Regional Data Owners at Dun & Bradstreet, shares how data quality is defined, measured, and operationalized across more than 650 million business records, turning quality metrics into tangible business confidence and AI readiness.

Week 18 also features a DO Panel on How enterprises move from AI pilots to scaled adoption with generative and agentic systems, with contributions from Faye Murray, Field CDO at Dataiku.

New Stage Moderators and Partners

This week we welcome new partners joining the DIS26 ecosystem: HPE, Intel and Snowplow, further strengthening the foundation for scalable, production-grade data and AI.

Week 18 reinforces a clear message: AI success is no longer about novelty. It is about foundations, judgment, governance that scales, and an unrelenting focus on value.

More to come!

The Data Innovation Team

From Regulation to Reality: Trust, Compliance and Scaling AI Where It Matters

Week 17 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition dives into the hard, necessary work of making AI operational in the real world. This week’s sessions tackle regulatory pressure, trustworthy autonomy, enterprise enablement, and the organizational mechanics required to move from experimentation to sustained impact.

New Speakers and Sessions

We are pleased to welcome Adeiza Yisa, Business Information Security Office (BISO) Advisor at Shell, with his session What DORA, CRA & the EU AI Act Mean for Enterprise AI Infrastructure. Drawing on deep experience in cybersecurity, governance, and IT/OT security, Adeiza breaks down how emerging European regulations translate into concrete requirements for enterprise AI infrastructure, and how security leaders can align risk, resilience, and business objectives without slowing innovation. 

From the public sector, Martijn Bauters, Chief Data Officer at the Belgian National Employment Office, presents How We Set Up a Compliant Hybrid Cloud Platform at the Belgian National Employment Office. The session offers a practical walkthrough of building a modern hybrid data platform in a heavily regulated environment, enabling secondary use of employment data for fraud detection, national statistics, and strategic decision-making. 

In the autonomous systems domain, Sahar Tahvili, PhD, Head of Verification and Validation at Einride Autonomous Technology, joins with Trustworthy Autonomous AI at Scale: Ensuring Safety, Reliability and Accountability in Decision Systems. The session explains how structured validation, scenario-based testing, and continuous monitoring work together to surface weaknesses early, manage risk, and maintain reliable autonomous decision-making in complex, real-world environments. 

On the data engineering front, Nina Alias, Head of Data & Analytics Engineering at NOBA Bank, shares Modernizing Data Engineering: From Tech-Lean to Data-Driven. The talk focuses on the strategic evolution of data engineering teams, balancing regulatory expectations, legacy constraints, and innovation, while building resilient platforms, modern workflows, and a culture of curiosity and efficiency. 

The Adoption stage welcomes Lana Kader, AI and Strategy Manager at Matas Group, and her session From AI Hype to Shared Reality: Scaling an AI Academy to 650+ Employees and Building an Enterprise Use-Case Pipeline. Based on a 10+ month, company-wide AI Academy, the session explores how to align vastly different maturity levels, build shared AI literacy, and convert learning into a governed, value-driven use-case pipeline. 

From retail and analytics, Deniz Minican, VP Data & AI Office, and Mathias Holm, VP ML Engineering & Data Science at H&M, present Separating Myth from Reality in Conversational Analytics. This session cuts through the hype to reveal the technical and organizational foundations required to deliver trusted, production-ready conversational analytics across complex enterprises. Also from H&M, Mathias Holm delivers Unifying Text & Images: Multi-Modal AI as H&M’s Engine for Search and Creativity. The session explores how multi-modal AI connects imagery and text to improve search, recommendations, creative workflows, and commercial outcome, while scaling responsibly and measuring real business impact. 

Rounding out the week, the Industry Stage features the panel How Can AI Reshape Retail and Logistics to Deliver Smarter, Sustainable Customer Experiences, with perspectives from Elkjøp Nordics and DoorDash, examining how agentic and data-driven AI is transforming customer experience across the value chain.

New Stage Moderators and Partners

We welcome Dácil Hernández, Credit Analytics Director at Resurs, as a new Stage Moderator for the Finance, Telecom, and Digital Services Stage. With over 20 years at the intersection of data, AI, and business strategy, Dácil brings deep expertise in responsible AI, scalable data foundations, and enterprise transformation. We are also happy to introduce Luiza de Lange, CRO Enthusiast, as Stage Moderator for the Gaming, Media and Entertainment Stage. With a strong background in experimentation, personalization, and analytics across multi-brand environments, Luiza brings a sharp, outcome-driven perspective on data-powered growth. 

Warm welcome to SODA, as our Stage Sponsor Partner for the Databases and Data Quality Stage (M9) during the Foundation Days, followed by a range of new partners joining: Broadcom, EnterpriseDB, Matillion, FX Analytics, SAAB and Bosbec, further strengthening the ecosystem around scalable, enterprise-grade data and AI. Week 17 reinforces a central DIS26 theme: AI only becomes transformative when regulation, trust, data foundations, and people move forward together, not in isolation.

More insights ahead!

The Data Innovation Team 

Agentic AI, Enterprise Systems and Data Foundations That Enable Real Autonomy

Week 16 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition focuses on how AI is moving from assistance to action, and what data, platforms, and operating models are required to support agentic systems at scale. This week’s updates span consumer AI, retail and logistics, energy systems, enterprise platforms, and the new rules of data for autonomous AI.

New Speakers and Sessions

We are very happy to welcome Sudeep Das, Head of Machine Learning & AI at DoorDash, joining the Retail and Logistics Stage during the Industry Day and his talk on Consumer-Facing AI & Agentic Experiences. Drawing from large-scale production systems, the session explores how personalization is evolving into goal-driven, agentic experiences across search, discovery, and execution, covering trust, controllability, and evaluation of consumer AI at scale.

In the same stage, Julia Paulsen, Director of Ecommerce at Elkjøp Nordics, joins the panel on How Can AI Reshape Retail and Logistics to Deliver Smarter, Sustainable Customer Experiences and also delivering a talk on How to provide real customer value with data and achieve truly seamless customer experience?, highlighting how Elkjøp applies its data-driven principles, “what you cannot measure doesn’t exist” and “always be testing” to deliver real customer value, measurable outcomes, and practical personalization.

From the energy sector, Jimmy Renström, CIO, and Martin Brolin, AI Lead at Stockholm Exergi, present Data as a Competitive Edge in the Energy Market. The session shows how data is embedded end-to-end across operations, production, and strategic decision-making, and how AI is applied pragmatically to drive resilience, efficiency, and sustainability.

On the engineering side, a familiar face makes his comeback, Olof Granberg, AI Strategist at DataMentor, with his session on How to Build a Data Pipeline for RAG – Practical Considerations, focusing on real-world challenges around data quality, retrieval, chunking strategies, and designing RAG architectures built for long-term reliability.

We are also proud to welcome Ramon Chen, CPO at Acceldata, as the opening Stage Session of the Modern Data Platform and Architecture Stage, and his session on Orchestrating Modern Data Platforms for Trusted AI-Ready Data across Hybrid Environments, exploring workload mobility, hybrid and fabric architectures, and unified governance for large-scale AI workloads. On the other hand, in the ML, Agents and GenAI stage, Teemu Jokinen, AI Expert at SAP Finland, shares From Machine Learning to Autonomous Agents, detailing SAP’s journey toward agent-based automation, open agent ecosystems, and enterprise-grade governance across SAP and non-SAP systems. Rounding out the week, Erik Horsting, Principal Solutions Consultant at Reltio, in the Modern Data Strategy and Governance Stage introduces Context Intelligence: Mastering the New Rules of Data for Agentic AI, outlining why unified, real-time context is the foundation for AI agents that can reason, plan, and act safely at scale.

New Stage Moderators and Partners

We welcome Patrick Eckemo, Senior Advisor at Bolagsverket, as a new Stage Moderator of the Public Sector, Healthcare and Education Stage, bringing deep public-sector expertise in AI and digital transformation. Anastasiia Glebova, Founder and CEO of Datu, also joins as Stage Moderator of the Analytics and Decision Intelligence Stage, contributing a strong operational and supply-chain-driven perspective.

New partners joining DIS26 this week include Astrato and Welkin by Elastisys.

Week 16 reinforces a core DIS26 message: agentic AI only delivers impact when data, platforms, and governance are designed for real-world complexity, not experiments.

Stay tuned. More soon!

The Data Innovation Team 

From Pilots to Operating Models, Value, Trust and Systems That Actually Scale

Week 15 takes the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition further into the practical realities of making AI and Data work inside large organisations. This week’s updates focus on value creation, operating models, trust, and the often overlooked systems and workflows that determine whether AI initiatives scale or stall.

New Speakers and Sessions

We are excited to welcome David Pontoppidan, Head of Business AI for Nordics and Baltics at SAP, to the DIS26 Industry Day Keynote stage with Zero Trust Intelligence, How to Build and Run in an Age of Deficits. Cutting through AI hype, David challenges organisations to move beyond superficial adoption and confront the realities of trust, scarcity, and decision making in modern enterprises. 

A key addition this week is Hanna Isacson, Product Manager AI and Automation at ICA, joining the Retail Industry Stage with her session When AI Became a Content Supply Chain Problem. Rather than treating AI as a tooling upgrade, Hanna shares a real world case from ICA Reklam showing how AI adoption exposed deeper challenges in ownership, flow, and collaboration. We also welcome Caroline Ohlsson, Data and AI Director at Verdane, bringing a sharp investment and execution perspective with How to Bet on Value Creation Initiatives. The session focuses on how to select, sequence, and stop data and AI initiatives using a clear value and feasibility mindset. 

On the data engineering front, Viviane Santiago Coelho Gomes, Data Ingestion Manager, and Ilko Masaldzhiyski, VP Data Science at Xeneta, join the Data Engineering/DataOps Stage with Why Deterministic Systems Still Matter for Data Automation in the Age of AI. Drawing from real production pipelines handling highly unstructured, business critical data, the session explains why deterministic systems remain the backbone of reliable automation, where AI and LLMs truly add value, and where they still fall short in production environments. We also welcome back Ole Olesen Bagneux, VP and Chief Evangelist at Actian, and his session How AI Is Changing Enterprise Data Search. The session explores how natural language, knowledge graphs, and emerging standards like Model Context Protocol are transforming enterprise data search into a shared foundation for both humans and AI systems.

In the Modern Data Platform and Architecture Stage, Marc Winkelmann from Scalefree International and Karsten Kristoffersen from Sparebank 1 Sør Norge present Migration to a Cloud Based Data Platform, sharing a concrete modernization journey from legacy systems to a scalable cloud data fabric. The session highlights how standardized definitions, automated data quality, and smart architectural choices create the foundation for trustworthy AI while keeping operational costs under control.

The Industry and Data Office programs continue to expand with new voices and perspectives. Lars Gudbrandsson, Chief Commercial Officer at Ritzaus Bureau, joins the panel How Can AI Redefine Creativity, Engagement, and Business Models in Gaming and Media, adding a commercial and content driven lens to the discussion.

Panels and Roundtables 

We are happy to welcome Annette Hultåker, Technical Manager at TRATON, who joins multiple formats this week. Annette contributes to the panel How Can Organizations Embed Governance and Strategy to Unlock Business First Innovation with Data and will also moderate the Chief Data Officer Executive Round Table, focused on turning data into a strategic asset that drives decision making and competitive advantage. Two more Panelists will join the discussions in the data Ostagon Stage, including Ole Olesen Bagneux from Actian and Johannes Sundén, Senior Manager Solution Engineering at Snowflake, contributing to discussions on next generation enterprise data platforms and why trusted data remains the non negotiable foundation for every AI and analytics initiative.

New Partners and Stage Sponsors

This week, we are pleased to welcome Google Cloud as the new Stage Partner for the AI Strategy and Governance Stage. We also welcome new partners Collibra, Dawiso and Dairdux, with Atlan joining as DAD Sponsor, and Scandic, Birger Jarl, and Voco as Venue Partners.

With strong perspectives on value creation, operating models, deterministic foundations, and enterprise scale trust, Week 15 reinforces a core DIS26 message. Real AI impact is built through systems, governance, and people, not pilots alone.

Until next week, more to be announced!

The Data Innovation Summit Team 

From AI Ambition to Production Reality – Trust, Resilience & Global Scale

Week 14 pushes the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition deeper into the realities of building, governing, and scaling AI and data systems in production. This week’s updates spotlight resilience, sovereignty, compliance, and real-world value creation, where architectural ambition meets operational truth.

New Speakers

A major highlight this week is the addition of Mallika Rao, Engineering Manager at Netflix, joining the Data Engineering and DataOps Stage with a deeply technical session on designing self-healing, AI-ready data and knowledge pipelines. As AI systems increasingly depend on real-time, multimodal, and high-quality data, Mallika’s session explores how pipelines must evolve from brittle ETL workflows into adaptive, intelligent infrastructure. Drawing inspiration from large-scale search and recommendation platforms, the talk offers a practical blueprint for building reliable, observable, and future-proof pipelines that reduce operational toil while enabling next-generation AI-driven analytics.

We also welcome Antonio Martiradonna, CISO at Orkla ASA, who brings a critical security and architecture perspective in his session “Cross-Border Sovereignty: Dreams and Wishes meet the Production Floor.” As organizations become more dependent on globally distributed data and compute, sovereignty is no longer theoretical. Antonio explores the real tensions between portability, compliance, uptime, and safety – particularly in manufacturing environments, offering a thought-provoking look at viable paths forward in an increasingly complex geopolitical and technological landscape.

On the governance and regulation front, Luis Martinez, AI Product Compliance Expert at ASSA ABLOY Group, joins the program with a highly practical session on the EU AI Act. “Blueprint for Trust: How to Turn AI Act Conformity into Competitive Advantage” reframes compliance as a growth lever rather than a bottleneck. The session shows how embedding AI conformity assessment, quality management systems, and risk controls directly into product development can accelerate certification, reduce audit fatigue, and strengthen customer trust without slowing innovation.

On the Industry Day coming from heavy industry and field operations, we are excited to welcome Luba Weissmann, AI & Data Director, and Christel Füllenbach, Global Operations Manager at Epiroc. Their joint session shares the real journey of scaling an AI-powered Service Technician Copilot from pilot to global deployment. With both business and AI leadership on stage, the session dives into adoption, collaboration models, and how measurable productivity gains were achieved in a regulated, industrial environment.

We also welcome Milap Patel, Head of AI Transformation at Ericsson, who brings a sharp commercial execution lens to the program with the session “Transforming towards Intelligent and Autonomous Pre-Sales (B2B).” in the Telco Industry Day Stage. The session explores how an Agentic AI framework is reshaping enterprise pre-sales by orchestrating customer insights into precision-crafted proposals at scale. Moving beyond basic automation, Ericsson demonstrates how Generative AI can transform proposal generation from an administrative bottleneck into a strategic, value-capturing capability, balancing speed, compliance, and brand integrity.

New Partners

Finally, we are pleased to welcome new partners strengthening the XI Edition ecosystem: Teradata and Lenovo who will be joining more than 105 technology providers during the event days. 

With deep technical engineering insights, production-grade AI governance, sovereignty realities, and proven industrial-scale AI deployments, Week 14 reinforces a central theme of DIS26: moving from AI ambition to trusted, scalable, and impactful execution.

Stay tuned, more to come soon!

See you in Stockholm
The Data Innovation Summit Team