Tech Talks Daily
What happens to a good idea when the person who understands the problem best cannot express it confidently in the language used by the rest of the team? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Gonçalo Gaiolas, Chief Product Officer at DeepL, about real time voice translation and the work required to make a multilingual conversation feel natural. Our discussion moves from the business cost of language barriers to the technical choices behind speaker identity, tone, speed, and the handling of sensitive meeting data. Gonçalo begins with a cost that is difficult to place on a...
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What if the most useful industrial robots are the ones helping experienced people continue working in safer conditions? Recording from the show floor at IFS Unleashed 2026 in Orlando, I spoke with David Askey, CEO of Ascend Robotics, about construction and maintenance machines working in spaces that are difficult or dangerous for people to reach. We discussed the gap between a robotics demonstration and equipment that can perform reliably at a customer site, where conditions rarely match the original plans. David shares a ship painting example in which he reports work completed three to four...
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What happens when individual AI agents begin working together as digital teams, and how much more can businesses achieve when automation moves beyond a single task? Recording live at IFS Unleashed 2026 in Orlando, Neil C. Hughes reconnects with Somya Kapoor, CEO and Co-founder of IFS Loops, to discuss how digital workers have developed since their previous conversation in New York. Last year, the focus was on individual digital workers performing specific tasks. Now, IFS is bringing several workers together to support wider business processes, with early customer deployments providing evidence...
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What if the biggest obstacle to industrial AI isn't the technology itself, but the data businesses are trying to use with it? And how much could manufacturers and industrial operators achieve if they could connect information from across the entire life of their assets? Recording live at IFS Unleashed 2026 in Orlando, Neil C. Hughes speaks with Shawn Gregerson, VP APM & MES Business Development at AVEVA, about how industrial companies are using AI, operational data, and predictive maintenance to improve reliability and make more informed business decisions. Shawn explains why industrial AI...
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Could your enterprise data support a reliable report and still leave an AI agent unsure what the numbers mean? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Saurabh Gupta, CEO of The Modern Data Company, about the difference between being analytics ready and AI ready. Saurabh's background includes data strategy and governance work at Thoughtworks, Washington DC government, and international organizations. Our conversation focuses on the information around data that machines need when they begin consuming it directly. A familiar reporting process can depend on human knowledge that never...
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What happens when marketing software starts learning from customer behavior instead of following a campaign rule that someone wrote weeks ago? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Neha Mittal, co-founder and CEO of JustAI, about AI agents, reinforcement learning, and a different approach to personalization. Neha spent over a decade working on growth and retention at companies including Twitter and Pinterest. Her experience repeatedly brought her back to the same problem: teams were running sequential experiments while the interests and behavior of their users kept changing. Neha...
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Is your company using AI to improve the buying experience, or to carry out the same processes faster? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Jonathan Kvarfordt, known as Coach K, about business strategy, go-to-market AI, and the relationship between people and automated systems. Jonathan introduces himself as VP of Marketing at 1mind and brings experience training revenue leaders and teams to assess where AI can support their work. We begin with his framework for optimizing, amplifying, or reinventing a process. The point is to recognize the difference between making an existing...
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What would change if your building could help explain what needs attention, why it matters, and whether the action you took actually worked? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome Bert Van Hoof, CEO of Willow, back to the show to discuss operational AI for buildings and infrastructure. Bert spent about 20 years at Microsoft, where his work included launching Azure Digital Twins. He now works with environments such as hospitals, airports, universities, corporate campuses, and data centers, where the condition of a physical space can directly affect the work happening inside it. We begin...
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How much damage can a proven leadership playbook cause when it is applied to the wrong company? Experience can give executives confidence, but Sameer Kazi argues that confidence becomes dangerous when it replaces diagnosis. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome Sameer Kazi, CEO of the Pantheon Platform, back to the show for a conversation about copy-and-paste management, first-principles thinking, AI adoption, and the value of listening before making changes. Pantheon supports major websites and provides DevOps tools for agencies and enterprise web teams, placing Sameer close to the...
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What matters most when you land in another country and your phone has no data? The cheapest plan may have looked like the obvious choice before departure, but priorities change quickly when you need a map, a translator, a ride to the hotel, or a way to tell your family you arrived safely. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Alfonso Mata Villa, Head of Strategy at Holafly, about the growth of travel eSIMs and why they have moved from a specialist product to a far easier alternative to physical SIM cards and traditional roaming. Alfonso explains that modern smartphones now make it...
info_outlineWhat happens when enterprises spend trillions of dollars on AI but the systems underneath it still cannot provide the context those models need to make reliable decisions?
In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I reconnect with Christian Monberg, CTO at Zeta Global, to examine what separates AI experimentation from production systems that organizations can actually trust.
Our previous conversation focused on how businesses could use AI to scale marketing without losing the human connection with customers. This time, we move deeper into the technology underneath those experiences.
Christian explains why disconnected tools and fragmented data remain barriers to AI adoption, and why Zeta rebuilt its data architecture using Palantir Foundry. We discuss the role of context graphs in connecting customer identity, business objectives, previous decisions, campaign history and outcomes so AI systems can understand more than isolated pieces of information.
We also examine one of the biggest questions surrounding agentic AI: when should businesses allow an AI agent to take action?
Christian shares what enterprises need around explainability, permissions, observability and learning loops before AI systems can safely move from recommendation to execution.
With global AI spending expected to reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, the conversation ultimately comes back to a simple question: how can technology leaders prove that their AI investments are producing measurable business value?