I joined Emily Erker on her show Lady Sunshine Live for a German-language conversation about building future-ready organisations through what I call a cybernetic enterprise: the integration of people, processes, technology, and AI in continuous feedback loops. The full video is embedded below; what follows is my English summary of the key ideas we covered.
Header photo: Romano Roth (left) and Raphael Reischuk. Source: Zühlke (zVg), via inside-it.ch.
Effective 1 May 2026, the Zühlke Group has introduced two new roles at group level: a Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and a Group Chief AI Officer (CAIO). I have taken on the Group CAIO role; my long-time colleague Raphael Reischuk has been appointed Group CTO. Both of us were already partners in the group.
Welcome back to The Cybernetic CxO, a monthly newsletter for CTOs, CIOs, and digital transformation leaders navigating the AI era.
April delivered the most-read post in this newsletter’s history: a Swiss medical professional vibe-coded a patient management system, put it on the open internet, and an engineer needed thirty minutes to get full read and write access to every patient record. The post travelled because the story is concrete, the legal damage is real, and the lesson applies to almost every organization I talk to.
AI is everywhere, between hype, hope, and knee-jerk reactions. But engineering is more than output: responsibility, systems thinking, and decision quality matter.
What This Talk Covers # In this talk, Romano Roth, Chief AI Officer at Zühlke, shows where AI already delivers reliable value in engineering today, where it fails, and what new skills and ways of working are emerging. With concrete examples from everyday practice.
Banks spend 93% of their AI budget on technology. Only 7% goes to people. And then they wonder why 95% see no impact on their P&L.
On March 31, 2026, I gave a keynote at the Zühlke Banking Talk in Schlieren on why the future of AI is “cybernetic” and what it takes to become an AI-native bank. The evening brought together perspectives from academia, a major German bank, and practitioners from Swiss financial institutions.
How to build adaptive, AI-native organizations where people, technology, data, and AI models work together efficiently.
$30 to 40 billion invested in generative AI globally. 95% of companies see no impact on their P&L. Only 5% create real value. Companies spend 93% on technology and only 7% on people. What is missing is not the next tool. What is missing is the ability to steer and adapt.
It is not the technology that is under pressure, but its integration into everyday business operations. Budgets are tightening, regulation is taking hold, and boards are demanding robust results rather than more roadmaps. The era of non-committal pilot projects is ending.
Welcome back to The Cybernetic CxO, a monthly newsletter for CTOs, CIOs, and digital transformation leaders navigating the AI era.
March was a breakout month. My reach nearly tripled compared to February. My post about the 750 billion dollar fear narrative became a high-performing post. And out of 32 posts this month, 6 of the top 7 were about the same topic: AI and jobs.
Summary # The NZZ article examines how tech giants like Meta, OpenAI, and Nvidia are now pouring billions into AI agents after already spending massive amounts on large language models. Meta acquired Moltbook (a “social network for AI bots”) and spent $2 billion on Manus. OpenAI acquired Openclaw for its autonomous AI agents. Critics see this as a “flight forward,” with companies investing even more money to solve the problem of poor returns on their LLM investments.
Although AI has moved fast, many organisations haven’t. Most leaders we speak to aren’t short on ideas, proofs of concept, or vendor demos. The challenge is turning AI into something repeatable, a capability you can trust, scale, and steer without creating new risks or bottlenecks.
Welcome back to The Cybernetic CxO, a monthly newsletter for CTOs, CIOs, and digital transformation leaders navigating the AI era.
93/7: The Budget Split That’s Killing Your AI Program # This number hit a nerve. My post about the 93/7 split (93% of AI budgets going to technology, 7% to people and process) reached over 10,000 people and sparked a real debate.
To stay competitive, companies need a radical upgrade. The Cybernetic Enterprise transforms organizations into learning systems that adapt faster than their market changes.
