The AI Transformation Playbook for Modern Technology Companies - Insights from the CEOs of CTAIMA & ZincoAI

From transforming a €160M SaaS platform to building AI-native from scratch, two founders reveal how AI is transforming products, operations, and competitive advantage in real time.

Hosts:

Christopher Fielding, Hg Partner & Kath Easthope, Co-Founder & CEO, Boardwave

Speakers:

Luis de los Santos Menéndez, Co-CEO, CTAIMA

Alvaro Mato, Co-CEO, ZincoAI

Sponsors: Alantra, Hg

AI is reshaping software faster than any technology shift in the last decade, but companies are approaching it from radically different starting points.

For established businesses, the challenge is how to successfully integrate AI into existing products, teams, operations, and customer expectations without disrupting what already works.

For AI-native companies, the opportunity is even bigger: rebuilding entire workflows and categories from the ground up using automation and AI agents.

This session brings together two founders navigating those challenges from opposite directions.

Luis de los Santos helped scale CTAIMA from an €8M turnover compliance software business into a €160M Hg-backed platform through rapid operational growth, strategic expansion, and category consolidation. Now, CTAIMA is focused on the next phase: embedding AI into a mature international software business serving customers across 17 countries.

Alongside him, Alvaro Mato is building ZincoAI as an AI-native company from day one, rethinking how back-office operations can be automated, streamlined, and scaled through AI-first infrastructure and autonomous workflows.

Together, they’ll explore what AI transformation actually looks like inside software businesses today. Rather than theory, this conversation will focus on practical lessons from two leaders building in real time, one evolving an established platform at scale, the other creating without legacy constraints.

Key themes

• Where AI is already creating measurable value across products, operations, customer experience, and growth
• How AI-native businesses and established software platforms can learn from each other’s approaches to innovation and scale
• The strategic advantages companies can unlock through AI, from faster execution to stronger customer outcomes and new business models
• What ambitious CEOs should prioritise over the next 12 months to build more competitive, AI-enabled businesses

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