CEO & Founder, Top 100 Women of the Future | AI, Web3, Metaverse - Advisor & Deep Tech Investor | Keynote Speaker | Masterclass | Master Human-Centric Tech Transformation

20,000+ leaders trained. 20+ years in the boardroom. One focus: helping leaders make AI decisions they won't regret.

I bridge AI, healthcare, finance & ethics for leaders navigating technology's human impact.

Most innovation conversations focus on what technology can do. The harder work is understanding what it should do — and who bears the consequences when it doesn't.

My work sits at that intersection.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗲
I've sat where you sit.
→ Board member: Generali Switzerland, Europe Assurance
→ Former boards: UniCredit, BlackRock
→ 20+ years as executive at UBS and AXA
→ Co-author: Fast Future Blurs (Wiley)

From UBS innovation to Generali strategy rooms, I've spent my career inside highly regulated systems where progress, trust, and responsibility must move together.

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
→ Davos Innovation Week— Moderated for 4 consecutive years (Fintech, Emerging Tech, AI)
→ Forbes Switzerland Award Jury member and Moderator 2025
→ FIBE Berlin 24/25  — Exclusive Behind the scene Influencer, Europe's leading fintech festival
→ Aeon Life collaboration — preventive healthcare, full-body MRI, AI- enabled early detection 
→ Co-Author Foresight Paper Future Beyond Our times (The World in 2125
→ Co-Author White papers EU AI Act 2024 (Germany), 2025 (Switzerland. 
→ Co-founder, Fast Future Executive Faculty — speed-biased learning for C-level leaders
→ Host, Edge of Tomorrow — conversations with technologists, ethicists, and humanists

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

Peace Ambassador nominee — United Nations Peace Foundation (2024–2025)
Senator for Switzerland — World Business Angels Investment Forum
Board Member of the World Smart Cities Economic Development Commission
Top 5 Women in Tech in Europe
Top 100 Women in Business in Switzerland — twice
World's Top 200 Business & Technology Innovators
LinkedIn Top Voice 24/25 | 143,000+ followers

𝗠𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀

Not hype. Clarity.

→ Ethical ROI in medtech and fintech
→ Human dignity in AI and scientific breakthroughs
→ Access and equity in healthcare innovation
→ Progress measured by impact, not just scale

𝗠𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗳
Technology alone won't save us. We will — if we lead wisely.

𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲

🎤 𝗞𝗲𝘆𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀 — I speak globally at conferences and universities. DM "KEYNOTE" for speaking enquiries. 

🏛️ 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀 — Open to selective non-executive positions where responsible technology and strong governance are central.

Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld

A 17-year-old just made $450,000 prosthetic arms cost $300.

No surgery. No brain implants. Just thinking makes it move.

Benjamin Choi watched amputees face an impossible choice: Basic hooks for $10,000. Or mind-controlled arms requiring brain surgery and a half-million dollars.

He built a third option in his bedroom.

The breakthrough that changes everything:
↳ Cost: $300 vs $450,000 (1,500x cheaper)
↳ Surgery: Zero. Two electrodes on skin
↳ Accuracy: 95% vs industry's 74%
↳ Code: 23,000 lines by one teenager

Think about that.

A high school student solved what billion-dollar companies called impossible. With YouTube tutorials, a $75 3D printer, and 6 volunteers who believed in him.

He collected their brainwaves while they imagined moving their hands. Trained AI to recognize the patterns. Then compressed everything onto a $30 chip. No cloud. No WiFi. Just local intelligence responding to human thought.

The arm withstands 4 tons of force. Users control it by thinking, blinking, or nodding. Whatever works for their body.

Seven new algorithms. 978 pages of mathematics. One teenager who refused to accept that amputees should choose between bankruptcy and basic function.

But here's what stopped me cold:

Benjamin made it open source. No patents. No exclusive licenses. Just posted the blueprints online. Download, print, assemble. Think to move.

The Multiplication Effect:

1 teenager = breakthrough innovation
100 builders inspired = global access
1,000 affordable arms = dignity restored
At scale = disability redefined

Watch what happens when you remove every barrier. No surgeon needed. No insurance battles. No waiting lists. 

Just human potential meeting human need.

Selected as a top 40 Regeneron Science finalist. Biomedical engineers studied his work and admitted: the student had become the teacher.

The future of healthcare isn't in protecting price tags.

It's in teenagers who see suffering and choose to solve it.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld for innovations that make the impossible affordable.

♻️ Share to spread hope to 2 million people living with limb loss.

#Innovation #Prosthetics #AccessibleTech #AI

Board & Executive Advisor on AI Accountability and Human Impact Former Fortune 500 finance executive helping leaders make responsible decisions before risk, regulation or reputation force the issue

Doctors told millions of people their knee cartilage was gone for good. A small molecule just proved them wrong in mice—and in human tissue.

Think about that.

Osteoarthritis affects roughly 20% of the U.S. population. Millions of knee and hip replacements every year. For decades, the standard answer has been: manage the pain, delay the inevitable, replace the joint.

The long-held assumptions:
 ↳ Once cartilage wears down, it doesn't come back
 ↳ Chondrocytes lose their regenerative capacity with age
 ↳ Joint replacement is the only real solution for end-stage disease
 ↳ Damage is permanent

What Stanford researchers found instead:
 ↳ An enzyme called 15-PGDH rises in aging joints and breaks down PGE2, a molecule that supports tissue repair
 ↳ Block that enzyme, and existing cartilage cells reprogram toward a younger gene-expression profile
 ↳ In aged mice, the drug regrew smooth, load-bearing hyaline cartilage—not scar tissue
 ↳ After ACL-type injuries, treated mice kept thicker cartilage and better movement

Here's the part that stopped me:

Human cartilage from end-stage joint replacements—tissue that had clinically "failed"—responded to the same treatment in the lab. It started forming new articular cartilage.

Tissue we'd written off still had dormant regenerative capacity. It just needed the right signal to wake up.

The path forward:
An oral version of this 15-PGDH inhibitor (MF-300) has already passed Phase 1 safety testing in humans for age-related muscle weakness. The same biological axis underlies both muscle and cartilage aging.

No osteoarthritis patients have been treated yet. But the door is open.

The ripple effect:
 1 study proves cartilage can regenerate in aged tissue
 10 replications means it's real
 100 patients in trials means we learn if it works in humans
 At scale = millions of people might keep their original knees

We spent decades accepting that worn joints only get worse.

This research asks a different question: what if the cells were waiting for permission to rebuild?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for breakthroughs where science rewrites what we thought was permanent.

♻️ Share if you believe regenerative medicine deserves more attention—and more funding.

Sources: Blau, H. M., & Bhutani, N. (2026, January 3). Anti-aging injection regrows knee cartilage and prevents arthritis. SciTechDaily.

Singla, M., Wang, Y. X., Monti, E., Bedi, Y., Agarwal, P., Su, S., Ancel, S., Hermsmeier, M., Devisetti, N., Pandey, A., Bakooshli, M. A., Palla, A. R., Goodman, S., Blau, H. M., & Bhutani, N. (2025). Inhibition of 15-hydroxy prostaglandin dehydrogenase promotes cartilage regeneration. Science.

A Norwegian family spent four decades pumping oil from the seabed.
 
Now they’re pumping drinking water from 600 meters under the ocean.
 
Think about that.
 
Norway is one of the most water-rich countries on Earth. And yet a family-owned subsea engineering company just built the world’s first commercial-scale underwater desalination plant.
 
The shift didn’t come from a startup.
 
It came from redirecting 40 years of North Sea expertise.
 
Conventional desalination has always required trade-offs:
 ↳ Massive coastal infrastructure
 ↳ Energy-hungry high-pressure pumps
 ↳ Chemical pretreatment that contaminates brine discharge
 ↳ Land use that competes with communities
 
What this team built instead looks very different:
 ↳ Subsea pods sitting 500+ meters below the surface
 ↳ Natural ocean pressure pushing water through membranes
 ↳ 40–50% lower energy consumption
 ↳ Chemical-free brine diluted to ambient salinity within 30 meters
 ↳ 95% less land use
 
At that depth, there’s almost no sunlight.
No algae. No bacteria.
 
The ocean does the pretreatment for free.
 
This matters beyond the engineering.
 
2–3 billion people already face water stress. Coastal cities are watching aquifers deplete while conventional desalination remains too expensive, too energy-intensive, or too damaging to marine ecosystems.
 
This technology doesn’t just produce water.
 
It removes the trade-off that kept desalination out of reach.
 
The numbers are straightforward:
 ↳ One module supplies 37,500 people’s daily water needs
 ↳ Cost per liter is roughly half of conventional desalination
 ↳ First water expected in the first half of 2026
 
At scale, the implication is bigger than water.
One module can support a small city.
 
At scale, water security becomes an engineering choice, not a diplomatic vulnerability.
 
Here’s the part leadership teams should sit with:
 
This didn’t come from Silicon Valley.
 
It came from a family that spent decades mastering hostile environments for oil and gas.
 
Same expertise.
Different direction.
 
We talk about legacy industries as if they’re the problem. 
 
But the companies that know how to operate under extreme pressure, in corrosive environments, with zero tolerance for failure may be best positioned to solve the crises we’re still debating in boardrooms.
 
The real strategic question isn’t just “what’s our transition plan?”
 
It’s whether the capabilities you’ve spent decades building could solve problems you haven’t been asked to solve yet.
 
For decades, desalination meant trading marine damage for human survival.
 
A better question: what happens when legacy expertise finds a new purpose — and who moves first?

♻️ Share with leaders in legacy industries going through a transition — the next chapter may already be in your capabilities.

Source: Flocean (Mongstad, Norway). First commercial subsea desalination plant, operational 2026.

Two teenagers asked a question most scientists wouldn’t think to ask: what if sound could clean water?

Think about that.

Microplastics are everywhere. In our bloodstreams. In unborn babies. In the water we drink. Most particles are so small they slip through even the finest filters.​

In a small community near Houston, two high schoolers from The Woodlands, Texas — Victoria Ou and Justin Huang — stared at cloudy water samples. 

No government lab. No corporate funding. Just curiosity and a bold hypothesis.​

What water filtration usually requires:
↳ Expensive membranes that clog and fail
​↳ Chemical treatments with side effects
​↳ Massive infrastructure
↳ Budgets most communities can’t afford

What these teenagers built instead:
↳ High‑frequency ultrasound waves tuned to push microplastics away from the water outflow​
↳ A “wall of sound” that forces particles into a tight region, like iron filings around a magnet​
↳ Once concentrated, the plastics become much easier to block and collect
↳ A pen‑sized device—compact, low‑power, and designed to be affordable if scaled​

Here’s the part that stopped me:
In lab tests, their prototype removed around 84–94% of suspended microplastics in a single pass. No chemicals. No expensive membranes. Just physics.​

Their project, “Acoustic Filtration: Harnessing Ultrasonic Technology for the Streamlined Removal of Microplastic Particles from Water Flow,” earned them the $50,000 Gordon E. Moore Award at Regeneron ISEF 2024 and international recognition. 

But the real breakthrough is what it opens: a realistic path toward removing the plastics we can’t see from the water we drink.​

Picture a village in a remote region. No access to industrial filtration. A small, affordable ultrasound device integrated into a local system, using sound waves to strip invisible pollution from the only water source they have. 

That’s the vision sitting behind this innovation — still early‑stage, but full of potential.​

We spent decades building billion‑dollar filtration systems.

Two teenagers, Victoria and Justin, asked a simpler question: what if we let sound do the work?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for innovations where young minds rewrite what’s possible.

♻️ Share if you believe the future of clean water might come from your own curiosity. 

Resources: Huang & Ou (Regeneron ISEF 2024) – “Acoustic Filtration: Harnessing Ultrasonic Technology for the Streamlined Removal of Microplastic Particles from Water Flow”
​
ACS ES&T Water – “A Novel Application of Ultrasound for Removal of Aqueous Microplastics” (2025)
​

​

A college student with quadriplegia types math equations with her tongue.

No surgery. No headgear. Just a retainer.

She’s studying math and computer science. She takes notes in class, texts friends, and researches assignments—often in places where voice control isn’t an option. Libraries. Lectures. Group study rooms.

The device is MouthPad^, built by MIT spin-off Augmental. It’s a custom 3D-printed retainer that sits on the roof of your mouth and turns tongue movement into cursor control.

Think about what assistive tech usually asks people to accept:
 ↳ Surgical implants, recovery time, and real risk
 ↳ Visible headgear that turns you into “the person with the device”
 ↳ Voice commands that fail the moment the room needs to be quiet
 ↳ Price tags that put independence out of reach

What Augmental built instead:
 ↳ A touchpad for the tongue: swipe to move, press to click
 ↳ Head-tracking for broad motion, tongue reserved for precise control
 ↳ Bluetooth pairing like a normal mouse—no special software
 ↳ $1,500 during early access
 ↳ Users wearing it up to 9 hours a day with low fatigue

Here’s the part that stopped me.

Her mother called receiving the MouthPad^ “the most significant moment since her injury.” 

Not the diagnosis. 

Not the rehab milestones. 

A dental retainer that gave her daughter control back—without making her life louder, more visible, or more medical.

In a lecture hall, no one knows she’s controlling her laptop. 
That’s not a side benefit. 
That’s the design.

For boards and executive teams, this isn’t a feel-good edge case. It’s governance. When non-invasive, low-cost accessibility exists and organisations still choose systems that shut people out, the issue stops being “technology limits” and becomes leadership. Procurement standards, inclusion policy, and digital decisions determine who gets full access—and who is left working around choices made for them. That’s when accessibility stops being a design preference and becomes an accountability issue.

And it raises a blunt question:

Why did we spend decades trying to restore digital access by opening skulls when a workable interface might already be inside the mouth?

♻️ Share if you think accessibility shouldn’t require surgery—just better design.

This is one of the stories from my keynote on Designing Accessible Futures: AI, Ethics and Inclusion in Practice for boards and leadership teams.

Source: MIT News and Augmental (MouthPad^ assistive technology).

Video Insta luminica.ai

Mice paralysed by stroke regained function after one injection.

If this works in humans, not trying will no longer be a neutral decision.

Think about that.

A single IV dose. No surgery. No implant.

Just peptides that cross into damaged brain tissue and assemble their own scaffolding at the injury site.

Northwestern researchers developed a nanomaterial made of “dancing molecules”.
Therapeutic peptides that mimic the signals neurons need to survive and regrow.

Here’s why this matters beyond the lab:

Stroke care today restores blood flow.
It does not preserve function.
Doctors reopen a blocked artery.
Lives are saved.

Then a second wave of damage follows, inflammation, oxidative stress, immune overreaction.

The outcome is survival with loss.
This therapy is designed to intervene at that exact moment.

When the blood–brain barrier is most permeable.
When damage is still unfolding.

For decades, stroke care followed a simple logic:

Restore circulation and accept the damage that follows.
That logic made sense when regeneration was impossible.
It becomes a liability the moment it isn’t.

Here’s the part that should slow decision-makers down:

The same platform previously reversed paralysis in mice with severe spinal cord injuries.
That work has already received FDA Orphan Drug Designation.

This is not a single result.
It is a platform approaching human accountability.

If regeneration is possible but not pursued,
-who owns the outcome?

If function could have been preserved but wasn’t,
-what becomes indefensible in hindsight?

For decades, medicine accepted that once brain tissue is lost, it’s gone.

A more consequential question is now unavoidable:

When preservation becomes possible,
-who is responsible for deciding whether it is attempted?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for breakthroughs that surface the decisions leaders will be accountable for long after the technology is deployed.

♻️ Share with those responsible for determining not just whether lives are saved, but whether irreversible loss is accepted by default.

Source: Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine. PubMed: PMID 41506958.

A 17-year-old mixed algae in a small lab hidden on his grandfather’s Hudson Valley vineyard.
 
It grabbed wet tissue and wouldn’t let go.
 
That experiment turned into VetiGel: a plant-based gel that seals wounds and helps blood clot.
 
Trauma care’s hard problem:
Severe bleeding is the leading cause of preventable trauma death.
 
A major arterial bleed can kill in 3–5 minutes.
 
Most products need firm pressure, the right wound shape, and time.
 
Deep, jagged wounds are tough to pack.
 
What Joe built:
-A gel that seals fast and triggers clotting
-No manual pressure
-Stops bleeding in under 20 seconds
-Works on skin and organs
 
The proof: In veterinary surgery on 16 dogs, VetiGel cut blood loss from 78 mL to 6.7 mL. Time to hemostasis dropped from 25 minutes to under 2.
 
Cresilon later created TraumaGel for humans. It’s FDA cleared.
 
It made Time’s “Best Inventions of 2025.” 
 
The Department of Defense signed on.
 
Picture an earthquake. A mother pinned under rubble, bleeding from a deep wound. No ambulance for 40 minutes. A responder applies gel. The bleeding stops. 

She’s still alive when rescue arrives.

We spent decades accepting some bleeds are too fast and too deep to stop in time. A kid in a vineyard lab didn’t accept that.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where curiosity changes medicine.

♻️ Share if you think big medical advances can start  everywhere. We just need imagination! 

This is my find for YOU on the the last Day of 2025 to show, how  human imagination is saving lives!

A man carved a shelter inside a fallen giant tree.
30 days. No power tools. No architecture degree.

Just hands — and engineering older than any university.

Think about that.

Viral bushcraft creators are turning massive fallen logs into hidden homes — excavating, reinforcing, and weatherproofing structures using techniques their ancestors knew.

Load distribution along the trunk.
Natural arch shapes for strength.
Drainage carved into the base.
Insulation from bark and clay.

Civil engineering, taught by the forest.

What many modern organisations still assume about building capability:
 ↳ Learning happens in classrooms with textbooks
 ↳ Simulations replace real-world experience
 ↳ People need expensive labs to understand physics
 ↳ Theory must come before practice

What hands-on builders prove instead:
 ↳ 92% of educators report better math mastery through environment-based learning
 ↳ 97% of teachers see improved problem-solving from place-based curricula
 ↳ Hands-on engineering tasks score 4.23 out of 5 for knowledge construction
 ↳ People who build solve problems faster than those who only study theory

And yet most organisations still train people away from the environments where real judgment is formed.

Here’s the part that stopped me:

These builders aren’t cutting live trees.
They’re transforming decay into protection.

A fallen giant that would rot for decades becomes shelter, classroom, and proof that nothing has to be wasted.

That’s circular design thinking — taught without a single lecture.

Every beam placed teaches load distribution.
Every joint sealed reveals material behaviour.
Every drainage channel carved demonstrates hydrology.

The Multiplication Effect:

1 hands-on project = 3 semesters of theory come alive
 10 outdoor programs = communities of problem-solvers
 100 schools adopting = engineering education transformed

At scale = a generation that learns by building, not just reading.

The real risk isn’t lack of intelligence —
 it’s leaders who’ve never had to test their understanding against reality.

We spent decades making capability abstract.

A better question for leaders:
do we keep designing systems that teach theory in isolation —
or ones that produce judgment through contact with reality?

Worth reflecting on how we develop real capability.

Video source: Unknown and might be AI generated. Similar bushcraft builds on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook show single builders creating shelters under roots or on top of giant fallen trees, often with basic hand tools and no heavy machinery.

Evidence that environment‑based learning leads to higher math and science scores and better problem‑solving than traditional classrooms. (WWF “Schools for Nature”, 2019; Becker et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2022; Gray Family Foundation, “Empirical Evidence Supporting Benefits of Outdoor School”, 2015)

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Razali Samsudin

An axolotl lost its leg. Four weeks later, it had a new one—bones, nerves, muscles, skin. Perfect.

Think about that.

For decades, scientists assumed this kind of regeneration was unique to salamanders. A biological trick humans could never access.

Then researchers cracked the axolotl genome. What they found rewrote the story.

What we assumed about human healing:
↳ Once tissue is damaged, it scars over permanently
↳ Regenerative capacity disappears after embryonic development
↳ Complex regrowth requires biological machinery humans don't have
↳ Limbs, hearts, spinal cords—once lost, gone forever

What the research shows instead:
↳ Humans share the same Shox gene that directs limb growth in axolotls
↳ Retinoic acid signaling pathways—key to regeneration—exist in both species
↳ The basic architecture for complex regrowth is conserved across vertebrates
↳ The code is there. It's just not activated.

Here's the part that stopped me:

The primary barrier isn't missing genes. It's scar tissue. When humans are injured, our bodies prioritise rapid sealing over regrowth. Scarring effectively silences the regenerative program that axolotls keep running.

Scientists are now investigating how to bypass this "scar barrier"—reactivating dormant pathways involving genes like Catalase and FETUB that could reprogram wound sites toward regeneration instead of scarring.

The ripple effect:
A decoded genome proves the machinery exists
10 pathways identified = targets for intervention
100 patients in trials = we learn if humans can regenerate
At scale = spinal cord injuries, organ damage, and joint destruction become treatable—not terminal

Picture someone with a severed spinal cord. Today: permanent paralysis. Tomorrow: cells that remember how to rebuild.

We spent decades accepting that human bodies only scar.

A better question: what if our cells were waiting for permission to regenerate?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where science rewrites what we thought was permanent.

♻️ Share if you believe the future of medicine is already written in our genome—we just need to learn how to read it.

Resource: Nowoshilow, S., Schloissnig, S., Fei, J. F., Dahl, A., Pang, A. W., Pippel, M., & Tanaka, E. M. (2018). The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators. Nature.

A 10-year-old walked 20 minutes on a treadmill. Her brain lit up differently for the rest of the school day.

Think about that.

Hillman et al. ran a study with 20 children. One day: 20 minutes of moderate walking. Another day: sitting quietly. After walking, EEG showed larger P3 brain-wave amplitudes and shorter latencies—markers of faster cognitive processing and sharper attention.

They also performed better on academic tests. Not slightly. Measurably.

What we've assumed about brain health:
↳ It requires intense exercise or expensive interventions
↳ Cognitive sharpness is mostly genetic
↳ Kids just need to sit still and focus

What the research shows instead:
↳ 20 minutes of walking changes cortical rhythms in real time
↳ Interrupting prolonged sitting boosts cerebral blood flow and executive function
↳ Higher habitual physical activity links to larger hippocampal and basal ganglia volumes
↳ Nature walks let executive attention rest—urban walks demand more frontal control

Here's what stopped me:

I took a walk at the beach last week. No agenda. No podcast. Just the ocean, birdsong, and my own footsteps. By the time I returned, the problem I'd been struggling with for days had an answer. My mind had done the work while my body moved.

That's not anecdote. It's neuroscience. EEG studies show nature walks reduce frontal midline theta activity—the brain's way of stepping off the treadmill of constant control.

The problem:
↳ More than half of US adults fail to meet physical activity guidelines
↳ Europeans sit 7–8 hours daily in car-dependent, office-based lives
↳ Higher sedentary time correlates with poorer fluid intelligence and memory

The design question:
When cities prioritise cars over people, they're designing in lower baseline attention and creativity. When they build walkable streets, protected bike lanes, and accessible public transport, ordinary trips become quiet upgrades for the brain.

Picture a child who walks to school through tree-lined streets instead of sitting in a car. Those 20–40 minutes of gentle movement become a built-in cognitive primer—not an optional workout.

We spent decades asking how to boost brain performance.

A better question: what if we just designed cities that let people walk?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where science meets how we live.

♻️ Share if you believe better brain health should be built into our streets, not just our schedules.

Source: Hillman, C. H., Pontifex, M. B., Raine, L. B., Castelli, D. M., Hall, E. E., & Kramer, A. F.. The Effect of Acute Treadmill Walking on Cognitive Control and Academic Achievement in Preadolescent Children. Pediatrics.

Nature solved some of our hardest engineering problems long before we named them.

A European robin migrates thousands of kilometres with a brain smaller than a pea.

No satellites.
No batteries.
No infrastructure.

Just biology.

For a long time, that sounded like a fun fact.
It’s actually a design lesson.

The robin navigates using a quantum compass in its eyes.

When light hits a protein called cryptochrome, electrons briefly enter a quantum-entangled state.

That state lasts around 100 microseconds.

In early laboratory conditions, that’s roughly what our quantum experiments achieved.

The difference is where it happens.

The bird does this:
At room temperature
In a wet, chaotic biological environment
While flying through storms

Meanwhile, we spend billions trying to stabilise quantum systems in supercooled, tightly controlled labs.

Same challenge.

Very different approaches.

Human navigation depends on:
Satellites orbiting 20,000 km above Earth
Global ground stations
Continuous power
Constant maintenance

Nature’s version depends on:
A single protein
No external infrastructure
No updates
No downtime

When researchers disrupted this system with extremely weak radio noise, the birds became disoriented.

Not because the signal was strong.

Because the system was precise.

Here’s the part that matters beyond biology:

Capital doesn’t solve complexity.

Understanding does.

We often try to scale effort to overcome hard problems.

Nature redesigns the system so less effort is needed in the first place.

That distinction shows up everywhere:
Products that scale without fragility
Teams that outperform their size
Strategies that compound instead of collapse
I
f you’re building something where leverage matters more than headcount or budget, this question is worth sitting with:

Are you adding more…
or are you redesigning the system?

Because the most durable breakthroughs rarely come from doing more.
They come from seeing the problem differently.

If you work in strategy, innovation, or leadership, this is the lens I keep coming back to when decisions get complex.

Source video insta @rootxdeep

A burn survivor is growing new skin from a biopsy the size of a postage stamp.

No donor wounds.
No rigid scars.
Skin that moves with her body.

Think about that, 

After the Crans-Montana fire on New Year’s Eve—40 killed, more than 80 survivors, many with burns over 60% of their bodies—Swiss doctors had to choose fast.

Do they stick with standard grafting?

Or use regenerative medicine now, knowing delay can lock patients into years of damage?

Traditional burn care means harvesting large areas of healthy skin. You create new wounds to patch old ones. Patients endure rounds of grafts, tight scarring that restricts movement, and repeat surgeries to release contractures.

denovoSkin takes a different route:
A bilayer graft grown from the patient’s own cells.
A tiny biopsy grown into large sheets with both epidermis and dermis.

The key detail: the graft is meant to grow with the patient.

A 19-year-old shouldn’t need decades of revisions. The skin is intended to integrate for good, heal with minimal scarring, and move with the body instead of pulling against it.

What studies report so far:
 ↳ big expansion from a tiny biopsy
 ↳ fewer donor-site wounds
 ↳ less contracture and tight scarring
 ↳ better long-term function and appearance

None of this was certain when the first patients were treated.

At least a dozen of the most severely injured young adults are now receiving—or being prepared for—treatment at centers working with CUTISS.

A Europe-wide Phase 3 trial is running across eight countries. First results are expected by the end of 2026.

If this becomes routine care won’t hinge only on the science. It will hinge on how fast hospitals, regulators, and payers move when the data is still early, but the cost of waiting is permanent.

One trial shows it works.
A handful of centers copy the protocol.
Enough patients get treated that “experimental” starts to sound like “standard.”

For decades, we treated severe burns as a life sentence of visible scars.

So here’s the question: when does “experimental” stop being a reason to wait—and start being a reason to act?

Source: Image adapted from CUTISS. University of Zurich news release:
“New Skin for Burn Victims” – Universität Zürich (UZH News), 15 Jan 2026.

She calls it her “kick-ass robot arm.”

Two years ago, Sarah de Lagarde slipped into the gap between a train and the platform at a London station.

Two trains hit her. She lost her right arm and right leg. She lay on the tracks for what felt like forever before anyone found her.

Sit with that.

Sarah didn’t just make it through that night.

She rebuilt.

Today she walks on a prosthetic leg and uses a bionic hand that learns her patterns. She speaks at TEDx. She’s a visible advocate for safer, more inclusive cities.

What prosthetics often meant for many users:
 ↳ A few basic grips
 ↳ Heavy, clunky hardware
 ↳ Clinic visits for every tweak
 ↳ Enough hassle that many quit

What Sarah’s COVVI Hand does instead:
 ↳ 24+ grips she can set up from her phone
 ↳ Strong enough to lift about 30 kg across the fingers
 ↳ Remote updates — no clinic required
 ↳ Light enough to wear all day

The numbers behind it:
 ↳ 700+ patients globally using COVVI hands
 ↳ 500+ components in each device
 ↳ Remote updates mean the same hand improves over time
 ↳ An NHS partnership aimed at making advanced prosthetics easier to access

Here's what got me: 

Sarah isn’t just wearing tech.

She’s using it to be heard.

Her message isn’t blame. It’s action: what if AI on CCTV could spot someone in trouble? What if platform design made falls less likely in the first place? What if the same thinking that built her arm helped build safer stations?

The multiplier:
 1 bionic hand = independence back
 10 platform fixes = hundreds of falls avoided
 100 safety systems = real-time detection across a network
 Big enough = cities that work for everyone

A few weeks before her accident, Sarah climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

Now she’s climbing a different one — turning her worst night into a plan for what comes next.

For decades, we treated certain risks as “just part of city life.”

So here’s the question: what changes when survivors don’t only recover, but help redesign the systems that failed them?

Source: Video @insta. COVVI (bionic hand technology), Sarah de Lagarde (TEDx London Business School), NetApp/COVVI partnership data.

A man who can move only one finger built a profitable tech startup from his hospital bed.

Think about that.

Li Xia, 36, lives in Chongqing, China. Muscular dystrophy diagnosed at age five. By adulthood: paralyzed, ventilator-dependent, able to move only one finger and one toe. Formal schooling stopped at fifth grade.

In 2020, he fell into a coma. Doctors performed a tracheotomy and warned his family: survival chances were low.

He woke up. More limited than before. But his mind was intact.

What building a tech company usually requires:
 ↳ Engineering degree
 ↳ Physical access to equipment
 ↳ Mobility to visit sites and clients
 ↳ Hands to type, build, test

What Li Xia built instead:
 ↳ Self-taught programming, physics, and computer science through online courses
 ↳ A smart agriculture control system managing irrigation, nutrients, temperature, and humidity
 ↳ Remote operation of an entire farm from his bed
 ↳ Input method: a virtual keyboard controlled by one finger and one toe

His mother, Wu Dimei, became his hands.

Under his verbal instructions, she learned to solder control boards, run network wiring, connect circuits, and maintain equipment. She even assembled a remote-controlled vehicle to move produce around the farm.

No engineering background. Just a son explaining what needed to happen, and a mother refusing to let his vision stay trapped in his head.

The farm is now operating smoothly and turning a profit.

The multiplication effect:
 1 person proves a hospital bed isn't a barrier
 10 people with severe disabilities see what's possible
 100 accessible tools built = more minds unlocked
 At scale = we stop losing talent to physical limitations

We spent decades designing workplaces for bodies that move freely.

Li Xia asked a different question: what if technology could become my body?

A virtual keyboard. Networked sensors. A mother's hands. That's all it took to turn limitation into a functioning business.

The future of work isn't about who can show up.

It's about who refuses to be counted out.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where technology extends human possibility.

♻️ Share if you believe innovation should be accessible to every mind, regardless of body.

#Accessibility #Innovation #SmartAgriculture #TechForGood

Diana Spiridon

A ceramics studio in Rotterdam accidentally created urban ecosystems on apartment balconies.

No plants.
No soil.
No irrigation.

Just structure.

Think about that for a second.

They placed 3D-printed ceramic shapes on balconies to test form and drainage.

Then nature moved in.

First came moisture retention.

Then algae.
Then mosses.
Then insects.
Then pioneer plants.

Grey surfaces turned into tiny ecosystems without anyone planting a thing.

That experiment scaled into Urban Reef.

What conventional urban greening usually requires:
 ↳ Digging up existing infrastructure
 ↳ Irrigation systems and ongoing maintenance
 ↳ Soil, planters, and space cities don’t have
 ↳ Years of waiting for visible results

What Urban Reef built instead:
 ↳ Porous ceramic modules that slot into existing buildings
 ↳ Rainwater captured on-site, slowing runoff during storms
 ↳ Microclimates that passively cool surrounding air
 ↳ Thousands of niches where life colonises over time

This didn’t come from a government programme or a tech giant.

It came from a small ceramics studio paying attention to what happened when you gave nature the right structure.

Here’s the part that stopped me:

These structures are designed to get better with age.

Not despite weathering.
Because of it.

The more time passes, the more life moves in.
Infrastructure slowly becomes habitat.

The multiplication effect:
1 module = a few insects and mosses
 10 modules = a cooling corridor
 100 modules = stormwater managed, temperatures lowered, biodiversity restored
 At scale = cities that regenerate instead of degrade

Over 70% of people will live in cities by 2050.

For decades, we accepted that urban density and biodiversity were trade-offs.

A better question:

When surfaces regenerate cities, who approves the shift?

♻️ Share with urban planners, architects, and leaders rethinking what city infrastructure could become.

Source: Video insta @goinggreenmedia

Two people in a garden shed gave children free prosthetic arms.

That shouldn’t be inspiring.
It should be uncomfortable.

Because for decades, we’ve been told innovation in healthcare requires funding rounds, patents, and scale decks.

Drew Murray and Stephen Davies ignored all of that.

From a shed in the U.K., they built Team UnLimbited and started 3D-printing prosthetic hands and arms for children, at no cost to families.
No VC.

No regulation theatre.
No permission.
Just execution.

What the prosthetics industry has treated as unavoidable:
 ↳ $10,000–$80,000 for a single limb
 ↳ Replacements every 3–5 years
 ↳ Growing children needing new fittings every 12–18 months
 ↳ Families forced to choose between debt and mobility

What two people quietly proved wasn’t inevitable:
 ↳ Open-source, 3D-printed prosthetics
 ↳ Materials cheap enough to reprint as kids grow
 ↳ Designs shared globally, not locked behind IP
 ↳ Children choosing colours and themes, not just coping

The most important detail isn’t the technology.
It’s this:
They didn’t patent it.
They gave it away.

Anyone. Anywhere. Parent, hospital, maker. Download the files. Print the limb. Help a child.

That decision collapses the story we’ve been told.
$80k limbs versus open-source files.
Closed systems versus shared designs.
Profit protection versus dignity at scale.

So this isn’t a manufacturing problem.
It’s a leadership one.

Boards signed off on these prices.
Executives defended them.
Regulators tolerated them.

And it took two people in a shed to show they were never inevitable in the first place.

♻️ Share if access > profit.

I had my brain scanned.

Not a routine MRI.

 An AI-enhanced one.

72 hours later, a digital twin of my brain landed on my phone.

That alone was unsettling.

The results came back clear.

No early indicators of Alzheimer’s.

No cancer.

Relief, obviously.

But that wasn’t what stayed with me.

A close friend of mine didn’t get that relief.

At first, the signs were easy to dismiss.

Lost keys.
Repeated questions.
Small lapses chalked up to stress.

Nothing alarming.
Until an AI-augmented MRI revealed early structural changes deep in her hippocampus.

That scan didn’t stop the disease.

But it changed everything that followed.

She gained time.

Time to plan while she still had clarity.
Time to adjust work, legal, and family decisions.
Time to enroll in a clinical trial that only accepts patients at the very earliest stage.

Instead of drifting into uncertainty, they moved forward with a plan.

That’s when the bigger picture hit me.

Today, 55 million people live with dementia globally.

By 2050, that number is projected to reach 150 million.

And yet most diagnoses still happen after symptoms disrupt daily life.

The technology to see earlier now exists.

AI-augmented MRI can detect structural brain changes years before symptoms appear.

For decades, brain health has been something we react to too late.

Now we don’t have to.

Which raises a harder question.

When early detection is possible, but not yet standard…

Who owns the decision to act?

I recorded a short video sharing what the experience was actually like
and why it changed how I think about preventive health.

Curious how others are thinking about this.

A woman who hasn't left her bed in years serves coffee in Tokyo every day.

Think about that.

Fumiko Miyoshi—known as Fuchan—has spinal muscular atrophy. Her muscles weaken and shrink over time. Her body doesn't move the way she wants it to.

But from her room, she controls a 4-foot robot at DAWN Avatar Robot Cafe. It walks, gestures, pours drinks. Her face appears on a screen mounted on its chest. She greets customers, takes orders, earns about 1,000 yen per hour—standard café wages.

She works from home. The robot works in Tokyo.

What employment usually requires:
 ↳ Physical presence
 ↳ Mobility to move through a workspace
 ↳ Hands to carry, pour, serve
 ↳ A body that shows up

What Ory Yoshifuji and his team built instead:
 ↳ OriHime-D robots with 14 joints, controlled remotely via eye-tracking, switches, or minimal movement
 ↳ Pilots operating from hospital beds, living rooms, care facilities across Japan
 ↳ Real-time interaction—customers see the pilot's face, hear their voice, have actual conversations
 ↳ Shifts that fit around medical appointments, fatigue, and pain flares

Here's the part that stopped me:

Fuchan's own words: "I feel most fulfilled and enriched when I'm working. I can forget about my body, which doesn't move as I want it to, and feel that I have meaning in my life and that I am connected to society."

That's not a robot replacing a worker. That's a person reclaiming her place in the world.

Some call it dystopian. A machine serving your latte. But look closer: the worker isn't replaced. She's inside the robot.

The ripple effect:
 1 café proves remote embodiment works
 10 locations means a new employment model
 100 pilots means income and community for people written off by the labor market
 At scale = we stop defining "employable" by what a body can do

We spent decades designing workplaces for people who could show up.

DAWN asks a different question: what if showing up didn't require your body at all?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where technology returns what disability took away.

♻️ Share if you believe work should be defined by what minds can do—not what bodies can't.

#Accessibility #FutureOfWork #Robotics #Inclusion

A researcher in Brisbane couldn’t import the bacteria he needed.

Australian biosecurity laws blocked it.

So he spent two years growing them himself.

Not for a startup.
Not for a pitch deck.
Not for a hype cycle.

Just to make infrastructure work better.

In 2010, Dr. Shihu Hu started with a 2-litre lab tank at the University of Queensland, trying to cultivate anammox bacteria. They’re notoriously slow-growing. 

They only survive under precise anaerobic conditions. 

Most facilities import them.

He couldn’t.

So he and a small group kept going quietly, for years, with a water utility and a university lab.

By 2017, they reached pilot scale.
By 2020, full rollout at Brisbane’s Luggage Point facility.

Australia’s first commercial anammox wastewater system.
Asia-Pacific’s first.

No disruption theatre.
No “reinventing cities” narrative.
Just execution.

The result:
Conventional nitrogen removal relies on energy-intensive aeration, heavy chemical use, and infrastructure designed for a different era.

What this system does instead:
↳ Uses bacteria that convert ammonium and nitrite directly to nitrogen gas, without oxygen
 ↳ Cuts energy use by ~60%
 ↳ Saves ~$500,000 AUD per year
 ↳ Increases capacity by 10% without new infrastructure
 ↳ Treats wastewater for ~800,000 people every day

Enough to fill 50 Olympic swimming pools.

It won the 2021 AWA Innovation Award.

And now the facility is biofarming bacteria for other utilities across Australia.

For decades, wastewater was treated as a problem to manage.

This project treated it as a system to optimise.

My take:

This is what good leadership usually looks like in real life.

Backing something that doesn’t photograph well.

Sticking with a decision before it’s easy to explain.

Letting the work compound quietly instead of trying to sell it early.

The breakthrough here wasn’t the science.

It was having the patience to let a good idea run its course.

That’s harder than it sounds. And it’s why it’s rare.

♻️ Share if this reflects how you make long-term calls.

Source video: @insta eco.medy and getinspired.app
Primary Case Study (2022): "Luggage Point ANITA Mox Sidestream Treatment" by Urban Utilities/Veolia/UQ in Water e-Journal (Australian Water Association).

A man with Parkinson’s sat in a chair.
He wasn’t medicated. Nobody operated. A chair sent 40 Hz vibration through his body.

His tremor stopped.

Think about that. 

A 12-week double-blind clinical trial tested 40 Hz physioacoustic therapy—low-frequency sound vibration delivered through a chair. 

The results:
↳ 76% of participants showed clinically meaningful motor improvement
 ↳ Tremor, rigidity, posture, and gait improved
 ↳ The placebo group? No significant change

For decades, mainstream medicine treated Parkinson’s like this:
↳ Symptoms require drugs or deep brain stimulation
 ↳ Sound therapy sits on the fringe
 ↳ Vibration can’t retrain neural pathways

Now the research points somewhere else:
↳ 40 Hz vibration can entrain neural and motor systems
 ↳ Vibroacoustic therapy can reduce muscle tension, pain, fatigue, and anxiety
 ↳ Music-based movement therapy can improve gait, balance, and freezing of gait
 ↳ A meta-analysis of 17 trials (598 patients) found clinically meaningful motor benefits

Picture a woman who couldn’t hold a cup without spilling. After 12 weeks, she could.

This isn’t a feel-good idea. It’s peer-reviewed neuroscience.

On January 19th, 2025, I’ll be at Davos with The Frequency School and J3D.AI (Jedi) House of Collaboration and Aurora Advisory to amplify this global movement for conscious leadership, business, and frequency to go into it:

“Frequency Reality: A Journey of Resilience and Healing in a Tech-Driven World”

I’ll be joined by Dr. Efi Pylarinou, moderated by Carina Schuster. We’ll talk about what’s happening when sound, vibration, and intention meet the nervous system—and why healing may be something you can feel, not just something you’re prescribed.

We spent decades treating symptoms, not systems.

So ask the better question: what if the body’s own frequencies are part of the answer?

Join us at Davos during the WEF. 

Register for the Frequency Circle here: ➡️ https://j3d.ai/davos

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where research changes lives.

♻️ Share if you think healing should be more than pills. It should include resonance.

Sources: The Effects of Long-Term 40-Hz Physioacoustic Vibrations on Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (2020, open-access on PubMed Central).
Music Therapy and Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review (2021, Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, open-access).

Join Us To Explore The Impact of Frequency

Helping you make sense of going Cashless | Best-selling author of "Cashless" and "Innovation Lab Excellence" | Consultant | Speaker | Top media source on China's CBDC, the digital yuan | China AI and tech

As a best-selling author and consultant, I combine my passion for fintech, AI, and innovation with my extensive experience in the banking industry and the Asian market. I wrote two No. 1 international bestsellers, "Cashless: China's Digital Currency Revolution" and "Innovation Lab Excellence," that provide insights, strategies, and practical solutions for the digital transformation of the financial sector. I have also been a top media source and speaker on China's digital yuan and mobile payments, sharing my firsthand knowledge and analysis of the world's most advanced cashless society.

With over 25 years of experience in risk management, structured credit, and debt financing, I deeply understand fintech and AI's challenges and opportunities for the banking industry. I have worked with start-ups and established insurance and asset management players, helping them navigate the uncharted waters of the latest cognitive, AI, blockchain, and analytic technologies. I have also led and contributed to multiple innovation labs and projects across Asia, applying the latest IBM technologies to real-world problems our banking clients face. I am a tireless evangelist for using technology to democratize access to financial markets and to enhance customer experience and value.

Richard Turrin

Accenture sees six trends that are rewriting banking’s future and contributing to “unconstrained banking,” where digital assets, new business models, and accelerated decision-making enable banks to do more than ever if they’re fast enough.

I give tremendous credit to Accenture for the best banking trends report I’ve seen so far this year!

Accenture backs up every trend with statistics that are designed to make even the most conservative banker sit bolt upright in panic.

Whether banks can move fast enough is the question, and Accenture’s advice on “what to do” is, on occasion, insipid and doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of the effort required. 

My take is that banks are in trouble. 

Banks are universally recognized as poor technology adopters, and virtually every one of these six requires banks to “move fast and break things.” 

When is the last time you saw a bank do that? 

While a few of these trends might be plausible for a bank to manage, it’s hard to imagine all but a few of the most tech-adroit running meaningful programs in all six! 

That leaves us with only digital money, agentic AI, and legacy tech as the three that banks will absolutely be forced to deal with in 2026. 

These six read like a death sentence for slow banks. 

Can they pull it off before running out of time?

👉 The Top Six

1️⃣ Dumb money gets smarter 
Adopting stablecoins, CBDC, and tokenized deposits.

2️⃣ Banking everywhere it matters 
GenAI assistants.

3️⃣ Agentic AI shatters traditional capacity barriers
Digital human-agent teams

4️⃣ The high cost of low cost 
Upgrade legacy tech.

5️⃣ Risk: Seeing the big picture beyond the pixels  
Integrated risk management. (Yawn, I read this every other year.) 

6️⃣ The battle for the balance sheet intensifies 
The very real threat from fintech, stablecoin, and private credit.


♻️Repost to share this great bank trends report
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

The Top 6 Tech Bank Trends – If They Don't Run Out of Time

🚨 2025 Top 10 — No. 1 🚨 Mastering AI Agents: A comprehensive guide for evaluating AI agents

Want to learn how to build AI agents that tell the truth? Read on to learn more about 2025's hottest topic from a great e-book! 

👉Why this report is No. 1, and matters in 2026:

↳ Learning about AI Agents is your No. 1 priority in 2026!
↳ This eBook is a solid read for beginners and more advanced practitioners.
↳ Save this post for future reference.  What is stopping you from diving in?
↳ I'm back from holiday and writing NEW content tomorrow!!

From the author: 

"This e-book aims to be your go-to guide for all things AI agents. If you’re a leader looking to guide your company to build successful agentic applications, this e-book can serve as a great guide to get you started. 

We also explore approaches to measuring how well your AI agents perform, as well as common pitfalls you may encounter when designing, measuring, and improving them.

We hope this book will be a great stepping stone in your journey to build trustworthy agentic systems."

👉The book is divided into five chapters:

🔹 Chapter 1 introduces AI agents, their optimal applications, and scenarios where they might be excessive. It covers various agent types and includes three real-world use cases
to illustrate their potential.

🔹 Chapter 2 details three frameworks—LangGraph, Autogen, and CrewAI—with evaluation criteria to help choose the best fit. It ends with case studies of companies using these
frameworks for specific AI tasks.

🔹 Chapter 3 explores the evaluation of an AI agent through a step-by-step example of a finance research agent.

🔹 Chapter 4 explores how to measure agent performance across systems, task completion, quality control, and tool interaction, supported by five detailed use cases.

🔹 Chapter 5 addresses why many AI agents fail and offers practical solutions for successful AI deployment.

♻️Repost to share this important read on AI Agents
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Mastering AI Agents eBook

🚨 2025 Top 10 — No. 2 🚨  The Future of Mobile Banking: The Top 18 Trends for 2025

This is a page-turner and fun read that will help show you the killer features your mobile banking app should have now. 

👉Why this report is No. 2, and matters in 2026:

↳ The real examples in this report are a great way for banks to focus on what is possible in 2026!
↳ Banks need more than excuses when confronted with features that are real and available elsewhere. 
↳ What is stopping your bank from offering these cutting-edge features, and are any of them enough to make you switch? 

What makes this report such a page-turner is that it includes two real examples currently in production for each of the 18 trends. 

This report isn't about daydreaming about what we might have in the future, but rather demonstrates what we should have and can have if more banks cared about mobile users.

What bothers me most after reading this is that I'm paying several banks for their services, and the apps they force me to use are outdated junk! 

It isn't just me who feels that way, 69% of users think their bank app lags behind!

👉 Why mobile banking matters: 

🔹 3.8 billion users will rely on mobile banking in 2025.

🔹 62% of consumers use banking apps daily.

🔹 78% of users log on to banking apps at least once a week.

🔹 86% of users now prefer a single app to handle everything from managing loans and tracking expenses to booking travel and entertainment.

🔹 53% of consumers report that mobile banking increases their financial awareness. Younger generations, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, are leading adopters of features like credit monitoring, budgeting, and savings tools.

🔹 64% of consumers research a bank's tech offerings before committing to services.

Will reports like this make your bank act and update its app? 

♻️Repost to share this stunning report on what is possible in banking apps now! 
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

The Future of Mobile Banking

🚨Top 2026 Trends, No. 3🚨: Tokenization will be big in 2026, JP Morgan recently launched its first tokenized money market fund (MMF), “MONY” on the public Ethereum blockchain in what is likely to be a model for others to follow. 

What makes this noteworthy is that JPM is the first of the largest systemically critical banks to issue tokenized funds, meaning more will follow. 

JPM follows asset managers BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity in issuing MMFs. 

MONY can be purchased only by institutional investors with USDC, and offers faster settlement times, around-the-clock trading, and real-time visibility into ownership.

↳ The trend is clear: the dollar has been tokenized through stablecoins, and assets will soon follow. 

↳Tokenization of “real world assets” (RWAs) has grown to $19 billion from $5 billion in a year, according to the more optimistic views of crypto proponent, RWA.xyz data.  

↳Estimates of the future potential of RWA tokenization range from McKinsey’s low of $2 trillion to “the sky is the limit.”  

What is clear is that this transition will not happen overnight, with the need to adapt tokenization to meet securities regulations being the most pressing issue.  

The Broadridge Tokenization Survey earlier this year showed how, among early tokenization adopters, 65% fear regulatory risk, and among future adopters rises to a lofty 78%. (below)

Tokenization also faces another problem in that it impacts the profits of investment banks, broker-dealers, and asset servicers. (below) 

No matter how good tokenization is from a technical perspective, expecting these institutions to welcome blowing up their existing business model is a stretch.

Still, the trend towards tokenization is inevitable, and while it might take longer than we want, it will become very real in 2026. 

♻️Repost to share this great read on tokenization!
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

JPM Shows How Tokenization Is Going Mainstream in 2026

Quantum computers are coming — and within the next decade, they could break the public-key encryption (RSA, ECC) protecting bank transactions, crypto, and more.

Citigroup calls it a trillion-dollar threat — and they’re not exaggerating.

The real danger: “Q-Day” (when quantum breaks current crypto) and “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attacks — adversaries are already stealing encrypted data today for future decryption.

Long-shelf-life data is most at risk: SSNs, biometrics, medical records, IP, and blockchain-exposed crypto addresses (25% of Bitcoin, 65%+ of Ethereum vulnerable).

HNDL makes data leaked onto the dark web today, which may not make front-page news, damaging in the future. 

We’ve heard quantum warnings for years — but experts now flag the next 10 years as high-risk. 

The scale is so massive (economic, geopolitical, even ideological for crypto) that ignoring it is no longer an option.

NIST-approved post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is ready — but it demands huge industry migration.

Citi urges banks: inventory crypto exposure, prioritize critical systems, and start the long migration now.

The question: With AI already stressing institutions, will finance find the bandwidth for quantum readiness?

♻️Repost to share this great read on quantum
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

The Trillion-Dollar Quantum Threat to Banks and Crypto 

Asian banks are making faster progress toward the use of agentic/multi-agent systems in operations than banks in the West, which are still focused on siloed pilots.

Leading Asian banks, the top 10% of AI users, are achieving 30-50% efficiency gains and 2-3x productivity uplifts through agentic AI, beating global peers. 

“Banks in Asia find themselves at an AI inflection point. They have a window of opportunity to pick up the pace of their transformations and to create distance from peers that may be slower to recognize and seize this moment.”

Asia’s banks are trying to widen the “AI-divide” with their competition to drive efficiency and increase revenue using AI. 

Why the focus on operations instead of sexy front-office use-cases?

↳ Approximately 75% of GenAI’s economic potential comes from just four functions, customer operations, marketing & sales, software engineering, and R&D. 

↳ End-to-end operations represent an estimated 60–70% of a bank’s overall cost base, making operational transformation through AI (especially agentic AI) the biggest potential value unlock in banking — far more disruptive than other functions

↳ McKinsey’s latest Global Banking Annual Review 2025 estimates that AI could bring gross reductions of 15 to 20% of a bank’s entire cost base

These gains will not be easily won due to regulatory complexity, legacy stacks, and institutional inertia that inhibit AI deployment. 

Another factor is that in parts of Asia, the cheaper cost of labor has historically prevented many banks from pursuing tech-enabled transformations of operations.

This is why Agentic AI, with its human-in-the-loop requirement, allows Asian banks’ larger teams, often deployed in repetitive, high-volume tasks, to be redeployed to higher-value work.

That said, Asia’s AI frontrunners, like DBS in Singapore with GenAI assistants, are pushing boundaries and showing the region’s banks significant improvements in frontline productivity, KYC/AML transformation, and end-to-end process redesign.

Asia’s banks are ripe for AI transformation, and their fast actions will likely make them models for the West to follow. 

♻️Repost to share how Asian banks are leading on AI!
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Asian Banks Lead Agentic AI Surge Compared to West

Deloitte sees five major trends in payments for 2026.  How many of the five do you think will make the cut?  

My take is that a few look strong, but always the skeptic, I can't see some of them going big in 2026.

The Five Trends:

1️⃣ Regulation meets innovation: Stablecoin enables seamless global payments

Stablecoins are still not fit for mass adoption. Banks need serious infrastructure changes for them to be used in wholesale or retail payments. And while some may argue that banks aren’t necessary for retail payments, the only way they will go mainstream is if banks are fully onboard. I agree that they'll be big in 2026 but not mainstream.  Note that I like how Deloitte acknowledges that on major transfer corridors, stablecoins offer little benefit.  

2️⃣ Mandates in motion: Speed is the new standard
  
Deloitte is correct, real-time payments are the future, but the US’s FedNow is late to the party and doesn’t deliver. FedNow payments are 100% bank controlled, unlike fast payment systems in Brazil, India, and China. It processed a mere $853B in 2025 compared to card’s $13T! I don’t expect FedNow to even dent cards in 2026. It would cost banks too much!  

3️⃣ Beyond compliance: Turning data standards into competitive advantage

ISO 20022 is great messaging tech and means that reports of SWIFT’s demise at the hands of stablecoins are way too premature. With global adoption, it will reduce the cost and time for cross-border payments at a time when stablecoins are vying to make their mark. It’s the tech behind FedNow, Singapore’s PayNow, and Australia’s NPP.   And it helps banks with AML/KYC.

4️⃣ Autonomous payments: Agentic AI is reshaping the role of humans in finance 

Yes, autonomous payments are coming, but I can’t square people outside of Silicon Valley using them with the US having one of the lower global scores in AI trust. Let’s face it, if Americans don’t trust AI, will they let it spend their money? I’m willing to be wrong on this, but tech is way ahead of citizens on this one.  Big in 2026?  I'm not buying it. 

5️⃣ AI vs. AI: AI-powered fraud meets real-time defenses

So ask yourself, who is more innovative, banks or criminals? This is why banks will always be a half-step behind the crooks. New tech will certainly help banks reduce losses and will bring the curve down, but this is a game without end, and banks will always be playing catch-up. 

👉Which Didn't Make the Cut?

By my standards, real-time payments with FedNow and autonomous payments don't yet make the cut!   

FedNow adoption is still low, and autonomous payments still have major trust hurdles to clear.  

So that's 2 out of 5 that I don't see going bigtime in 2026! 

Tell me why I'm wrong!

♻️Repost with your thoughts
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Five trends in payments: How many make the cut?

“Sovereign AI” has become a strategic imperative. Nations want to cut dependence on foreign tech, protect national interests, and stay competitive in the AI race.

But here’s the reality: AI is the new oil — no country can afford to ignore it. 

Yet full “build-it-yourself” sovereignty is a myth for most. The US and China already control ~65% of global AI investment.

Chips, LLMs, infrastructure — they come from somewhere. A rigid go-it-alone policy is unrealistic when the resources are concentrated in just two powers.

The WEF offers a smarter path: prioritize strategic control and resilience over total self-sufficiency. 

Quote from WEF:
“Success in the AI era will be determined not by isolation, but by strategic interdependence – balancing domestic investment in key AI infrastructure with international collaboration.”

↳ This pragmatic approach helps nations avoid being forced to pick sides between the US and China. 

↳ It wisely promotes interoperable systems to dodge vendor lock-in. Run Chinese models on US servers (or vice versa) if it makes sense. 

↳Use “digital embassies” for data sovereignty.

No country — not even the US or China — can own the entire AI value chain. 

The winners will control partnerships, focus on adoption, and stay ecosystem-agnostic.  

Nations like India, Singapore, and the UAE featured in the report have winning formulas. 

That’s how you capture AI’s economic value and close the gap between AI makers and AI takers.

What’s your take? Is full AI sovereignty realistic, or is smart interdependence the only viable path forward?

♻️Repost to share this great read on AI sovereignty
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Sovereign AI: Go It Alone Means Fall Behind

🚨Top 2026 Trends, No. 4:🚨 Strong AI Governance Will Become The Norm — But Only After a Meltdown Forces Companies to Act

AI Governance will become a hot-button issue in 2026 because a global brand will experience an AI meltdown, triggering bad headlines, an apology from the CEO, and public questions about governance.

No one should be surprised that AI governance will be a key trend for 2026 when it is on the evening news.  

The paradox is that IBM shows how governance is not a hindrance to AI deployment but an accelerant! 

IBM’s survey of 1,000 global senior business and technology leaders showed that:

↳executives credited more than a quarter (27%) of their efficiency gains to strong governance. 

↳companies that invest more in AI ethics report 34% higher profit from AI as well as faster launches and stronger security.

These results show that the common belief that AI governance impedes the development of AI or is a mere “check-the-box” compliance issue is simply false.

The problem, however, is that while IBM shows governance accelerates AI development, the majority of surveys show that companies are ill-prepared for managing AI:

↳ Less than 1% of Firms Build Responsible AI (Sept 2025)

↳ 72% of organizations using AI report that their CEO is not responsible for overseeing AI governance and that 83% of boards do NOT oversee AI governance. (March 2025)

↳ Only 23% of organizations surveyed said they were highly prepared for “GenAI Risk and Governance” (August 2025)

I expect 2026 to be the year when AI governance lands front and center in front of every major company.  

Sadly, it will take an epic meltdown and a global news event to do so. 

♻️Repost to share this important read on AI governance.
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI Governance Will Need a Meltdown to Be Taken Seriously

One in six people now uses AI daily, while 6.8 billion remain left behind in the widening global divide as global adoption of GenAI tools reached 16.3% of the world’s population, and the Global South falls further behind.

Microsoft’s latest report on AI diffusion confirms my call last week: the AI divide is the No. 1 trend for 2026. (see link below)

Microsoft’s “telemetry” shows that AI adoption in the Global North grew almost twice as fast as in the Global South, widening the gap from 9.8 to 10.6 percentage points. 

The AI gap is growing, and AI’s benefits are not expanding equally among nations, companies, and people.

↳ The world leaders are the UAE and Singapore, treat AI as a national priority with build-outs of digital infrastructure, regulatory assistance, and policies that integrate AI into daily life. 

↳ The US dropped from 23rd to 24th place, reflecting the fact that a smaller proportion of the US population uses AI compared to smaller nations.

↳ The US’s low adoption rate also tracks with AI trust; only 32% of Americans trust AI, compared to 67% in the UAE.

I’ve long argued that Chinese open-source models would bridge the gap for developing nations priced out of Silicon Valley subscriptions.

↳ Microsoft, agrees: “DeepSeek removed both financial and technical barriers that limit access to advanced AI.” 

↳ DeepSeek’s surge is most striking in Africa, where usage is estimated 2–4× higher than in other regions — reaching millions who otherwise would have zero access.

Simply put, if people cannot afford AI, they can’t use it! 

Whatever side of the geopolitical US-China divide you fall on, you have to give DeepSeek credit where it’s due: 

DeepSeek is delivering AI to the underserved.

Never forget that OpenAI was at its start designed to be open-source, and Sam Altman is clear that OpenAI is on the ‘wrong side of history.’ 

What do you think — will open-source AI narrow the divide, or will it widen further?


♻️Repost to share this great read on the AI-divide
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI Divide: North-South Gap Widens – 6.8B Left Behind

Weekend Read:  300,000 voices across 20 countries show that people feel more stretched, less healthy, and less confident about the future than they did a few years ago.

This stunning report by Oliver Wyman is my best Weekend Read in ages, as it affects every one of us who feels stuck in a treadmill of "more striving, less thriving."

For fintech and AI lovers, go straight to Chapter 3, page 50 for the chapter on AI investing with some shocking revelations:

-In two years, the share of people using AI for investing has jumped by nearly a third, to 44%. 

-Those confident they can outperform advisers are nearly 50% likelier to use AI for investing and financial planning. 

-Even as AI use has climbed, interest in letting AI invest automatically has fallen from 41% to 32%. Most see the technology as a co-pilot, not an autopilot.

-65% of middle to high income earners say they "can get better returns on their own than with a financial adviser."

👉This report offers so much more than AI in investing. It covers the big trends that are making us feel worse, not better.  

It also shows how the forces below are all reinforcing one another and, frankly, making everyone miserable: 

↳ We value achieving, caring, and being healthy more — yet we feel worse. 

People report feeling 9% worse physically and mentally than a few years ago. The pattern is “more striving, less thriving.” 

↳We turn to community, each other, and AI when the health system falls short. 

Quality-of-life indicators are at record highs, but people report feeling worse mentally and physically than a few years ago. Yet the pursuit of stability resembles a perpetual sprint: Everyone is running harder just to stay where they are.

↳We want fulfillment at work, but we’re settling for less — and slowing organizations down. 

 Employees are delivering “just enough,” and quietly draining momentum.

↳We’ve stopped forgiving bad experiences as consumers. 

 “Very right” has become the baseline expectation: 64% will dump a brand after a single poor experience.

↳We dream of never needing a paycheck again. 

Financial independence is now the fastest-growing unmet need, rising to 41% from 32% in 2022. Pressure to “make money to feel successful” has nearly doubled (+80%). 

↳We are the last generation to work only with humans. 

Two-thirds of employees (67%) already interact with AI in “human-like” ways and 28% prefer an AI manager over a human one. 

↳We’re leading through constant disruption and a fractured workforce. 

 51% say leadership models are outdated, and the share citing “subpar leadership” as a top dissatisfaction has jumped nearly 60% since 2023. 

Kudos to principle author Ana Kreacic and team! 

♻️Repost to share this report that shows why we all feel the same stress!
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI reshapes our world as more are striving not thriving

🚨Top 2026 Trends, No. 1🚨: AI Inequality and Why APAC Is the Ultimate AI Testing Ground 

While we accept that banks and companies will rise and fall based on their AI capabilities, do we accept that nations, too, will face a similar fate, rising and falling with access to AI, the new “oil” fueling growth? 

AI is the world’s next essential infrastructure, like power, roads, and schools, with big upsides and the ever-present risk of falling behind.  

That’s why it is No. 1 on the list for the Top Trends of 2026! 

Access to AI will be crucial, and APAC will be ground zero for AI implementation. 

Why APAC?  

APAC’s 200x gap between the richest and poorest nations will make it a key testing ground for AI.

AI will be abundant in rich nations, with a gap that can hopefully be closed by deliberate diffusion to poorer nations.  

Add to that reasonably good connectivity, high trust in AI, and a broad diversity from island nations to AI juggernauts like China, makes it a natural front in the battle against AI inequality. 

But here’s the wild card.

So far, the expectation from the West is that nations and peoples without AI access will simply sit it out and wait patiently as the “AI Race” passes them by.  

This is, at best, naive and, at worst, ignores the urgent needs of billions without access.

Developing nations, particularly those in APAC, with generally good connectivity, unlike those in Africa, will not sit it out on the sidelines.  

They won’t watch while AI helps to transform education, healthcare, and agricultural management for others.

They will reach out for AI wherever they find it, and this leads us inevitably to the geopolitical and philosophical battle between China and the US over open-source AI access.

China’s AI is generally open-source and available to all, while Silicon Valley’s subscription model, used to generate revenue for massive data center expansion, largely bypasses developing nations. 

Even Sam Altman believes OpenAI has been “on the wrong side of history” when it comes to open-sourcing its technologies. 

Putting people first by enabling women, men, and children in the most vulnerable or remote communities to be empowered by the best that human achievement has to offer through AI is unstoppable. 

How it plays out in APAC will be a key feature of 2026 that we should all watch carefully as the “Next Great Divergence” plays out.

♻️Repost to share this Top Trend for 2026!
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI Inequality: APAC is the Ultimate Testing Ground

Weekend Read:  2026: The Year AI Transforms Jobs Forever – Supercharged, Displaced, Co-Piloted or Stalled?

The WEF looks at the biggest question facing society in 2026: the future of jobs as AI transforms and displaces them. 

The Four Potential Scenarios for jobs will be:

1️⃣ Supercharged Progress:
Exponential Al breakthroughs reshape industries, business models and workflows. Productivity soars and innovation flourishes. Widespread Al readiness allows people to harness the "agentic leap."  

2️⃣ The Age of Displacement: 
Exponential Al advancement outpaces the capacity of the workforce to adapt. Businesses race to automate as a stopgap, displacing workers faster than education and reskilling systems can respond.

3️⃣ Co-Pilot Economy: 
Gradual Al progress and availability of Al-ready skillsets shift the focus towards augmentation rather than mass automation. The Al hype of the 2020s has given way to pragmatic integration: most industries see incremental transformation as human-Al teams reshape value chains.

4️⃣ Stalled Progress: 
Steady Al progress meets a workforce lacking critical skills. Productivity growth is patchy, and businesses lean on automation to backfill scarce talent. Gains concentrate within businesses and geographies with Al expertise, while others face eroding competitiveness.

Read the “No-Regret” strategies to prepare for all of these potentialities on page 4!

Which of the four scenarios do you think will happen? 

My take?  The co-pilot economy mixed with stalling!  

I see the AI divide causing a big stall ahead. 

Am I too pessimistic?  

♻️Repost to share this great read on the future of jobs and AI!
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

2026: The Year AI Transforms Jobs Forever — 4 Scenarios!

Deloitte's latest report reveals a massive shift: AI tokens are driving enterprise IT budgets up by 20%+, replacing predictable SaaS pricing with volatile, usage-based GenAI costs.

↳ AI is now the fastest-growing corporate tech expense — some firms report it consuming up to 50% of IT budgets.

↳ ROI is lagging badly: only 28% of finance leaders see clear value, and half expect 3+ years to break even.

↳ Token spend is unpredictable — scales with model complexity, prompt length, reasoning steps, and infrastructure costs (high-bandwidth memory, storage, electricity).

The only real cost control? Open-source AI models — free to use, self-hosted, with data sovereignty benefits.  

Running an "AI factory" with a mix of open-source and other models is the ultimate cost control for larger organizations.  

Linux Foundation: 89% of orgs already use open source in AI stacks; McKinsey: ~50%.

Watch as Silicon Valley’s trillion-dollar data center bet just got riskier if open source dominates.

Key takeaways for banking & fintech:

↳ Token usage explodes unpredictably — no more fixed seats
↳ Governance is lagging — shadow spend is real
↳ Budget shock incoming — controls are non-negotiable
↳ Winners act now: track tokens, optimize prompts, negotiate volumes, build budgets
↳ Open-source AI is essential for cost reduction

Token economics demand active financial discipline, just like cloud spend did 10 years ago, and a hard look at using open-source AI. 

Drop a comment — curious how you're navigating this shift.

♻️Repost to share this great read on AI tokens! 
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI Tokens: The New Currency of Enterprise AI

The digital euro’s parliamentary approval is all but assured following Trump’s threat to EU sovereignty over Greenland, which reinforced the ECB’s consistent calls for the digital euro to bring “monetary sovereignty” to the EU.  

A few days ago, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone stated the crux of the problem, pointing out that US companies like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal own “critical parts” of the global financial infrastructure and “can theoretically pull the plug on us.”

Comments like Cipollone’s may sound alarmist at first glance, but real-world events show his concerns are far from unfounded.

Nicolas Guillou is a French judge at the ICC in The Hague, and is now under U.S. sanctions for authorizing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.

As a result of these sanctions, he can no longer use Visa, Mastercard, or Amex, maintain normal EU-based banking services, or use digital accounts or services with US companies.  

While Guillou’s case may be extreme, and readers may fall on different sides of his decision, it shows the need for EU monetary sovereignty in cases where the US and EU do not see eye to eye. 

Reports from late 2025 suggesting that the digital euro would face difficulty in the EU Parliament now seem like ancient history, and a vote is scheduled for May 5, with Germany announcing its backing of the project yesterday.

Bolstering the case for a digital euro are more than 60 economists who are imploring EU parliamentarians to back the digital euro, warning the Eurozone would “lose control of the most fundamental element in our economy: our money,” to US payment providers.  

The economists, including famed French academic Thomas Piketty, state: “A strong public digital euro is not a nice-to-have, it is an essential safeguard of European sovereignty, stability and resilience.” 

They are right, and after Trump’s Greenland threat and US sanctions, rejecting the digital euro would now be politically unthinkable. 

♻️Repost to share the love for the digital euro.
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Digital Euro: Visa and MC Can "Pull the Plug" on the EU

Weekend Read: Mambu's "Predictions Report" is a great read that is both easy to skim and thought-provoking as financial services are being "radically rewritten." 

What makes this report such a great read is the inclusion of quotes from industry practitioners in every chapter.  

If you read nothing else, go straight to page 15 for the excellent and rare coverage of Islamic finance.  

"By 2026, Islamic finance will no longer be seen as a niche alternative but as a blueprint for ethical, inclusive and technology-driven banking worldwide." 

Other noteworthy chapters:  Pg 18, "The Transformation in Banking" and Pg 32, "Gen Z, Gen Alpha, the Future of Finance." 

👉Seven topics will define the next chapter of financial services in 2026.

↳ Al and the financial revolution
Artificial intelligence has reached a new frontier of capability

↳Compliance, regulation, and cybersecurity
As innovation accelerates, trust has become one of the most valuable assets in financial services

↳Islamic finance
A principles-led model of finance is taking shape in the digital-first world

↳Transformation in banking
Banking is no longer defined by balance sheets and branches, but by the technology that connects them

↳Payment innovation and Embedded Finance
Payments are disappearing into the background of daily life

↳Crypto and blockchain
Blockchain has moved beyond experimentation to become part of modern finance's digital infrastructure

↳Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the future of finance 
Every generation reshapes how people live, connect, and create value

What is Mambu missing, if anything?  

♻️Repost this great banking trends report, especially if you're among the 97.6% of LinkedIn users who don't post.  How can you go wrong with this one? 

#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Read How FinServ is Being "Radically Rewritten" 

The quantum threat is a trillion-dollar risk that could break every bank & crypto wallet in a decade as nationalism and insularity impact AI sovereignty and fintech's global aspirations.

If you’re reading this newsletter, I’m sure you are as “alert and attentive” as are the “syndics” of the “drapers guild” in Rembrandt’s famous painting below! 

This week's headline article is all about the quantum threat to finance and crypto. We’ve covered this topic before, but with advances in quantum computing, the threat is getting more real by the day.  

The good news is that standards for quantum-proofing systems exist, so banks and payment companies aren’t being asked to invent the technology, just apply it.  

Application, however, is still a monumental effort in that they need to audit their systems and manage a coordinated roll-out of new quantum-proof tech with other industry participants.

Add quantum to banks’ AI transformation, and it’s not an overstatement to say that they are seriously “burdened!” 

Which leads us to Accenture’s report on the top 6 tech trends for banks in 2026. I give tremendous credit to Accenture for one of the best reports of its kind.  

I just said that banks are “burdened,” and after reading this, you’ll see how heavy the burden on their shoulders is. I seriously doubt that most banks have the tech bandwidth to move fast enough on all of these efforts. 

Who could miss this week’s Davos Forum?  I have two reports that are straight out of Davos that focus on the impact of nationalism and insularity on Sovereign AI and fintech.

This is a real issue for neobanks Revolut, Nubank, and bunq (no capital B), all of which aspire to launch in the challenging US market.  

Deutsche Bank analysts declare that the AI honeymoon is over and that profits need to flow in 2026!  

This is a great read that confirms my constant warnings in this newsletter that while AI is transformational tech, it will take longer to implement than advertised. 

Finally, we look at Mambu’s top predictions for banking, look at the sections on Islamic Finance and Gen Z. 

♻️Repost to share these great reads on quantum and AI sovereignty.
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

Thanks for reading the “Cashless” newsletter, an insider’s view on Asia’s fintech, CBDC, and AI for anyone striving to understand “the Asia Century.” 

Open article: The Quantum Threat: Trillion-Dollar Risk That Could Break Every Bank & Crypto Wallet in a Decade by Richard Turrin • 5 min read

The Quantum Threat: Trillion-Dollar Risk That Could Break Every Bank & Crypto Wallet in a Decade

🚨Top 2026 Trends, No. 5:🚨 Digital Public Infrastructure Goes Global — Powered by Payments Success in India, Brazil, and China

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is one of the most important trends in payments, with strong success in India and Brazil, making the rest of the world pay attention. 

DPI is a trend that cannot be ignored, and before readers say, it won’t happen in the West, I point to the digital euro, which is a model of DPI development. 

The digital euro proves that DPI is not solely the domain of developing countries but is every bit as relevant for advanced economies. 

Brazil’s UPI and India’s PIX together account for nearly two-thirds of global instant payment transactions and are models of how universal instant payments are an engine for economic growth.

China’s WeChat and Alipay also proved the economic value of universal instant payments, and while not strictly speaking DPI, the state-owned Union Pay network, initially used to carry their payments, is in spirit. 

As DPI, all of these payment systems are universally available and the cornerstone of financial inclusion, economic growth, and fintech innovation. 

Whether UPI, PIX, WeChat, or Alipay, all of these systems reduce onboarding time and provide instant, secure, and nearly cost-free payments, saving time and money for quite literally billions of users. 

DPI is a trend that won’t go away, and I expect more nations, particularly those in the global south, to take note and press forward with DPI payments. 

By the way of all of the top trends lists I've seen this year, I'm the only one covering DPI!   Check back in 2027!!

♻️Repost to share this important read on DPI
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

DPI is going global and not just for developing nations 

Deutsche Bank boldly says that the AI honeymoon is over in 2026, ending with disillusionment, dislocation, and distrust

According to the bank's tech analysts, this will be a tough year for AI, as it will have to prove its value to keep the money flowing. 

Deutsche's prognosis is not good, and the report’s opening line sets the tone for disillusionment in 2026:  

“Generative AI will be transformative, but not right now. As pilots move into production, enterprise users are confronting inherent limitations such as accuracy; the difficulty of applying it in unpredictable real life; and the fact that in many areas it will be a long time, if ever, before it is more economical than human labour.”

👉Three themes are converging:

1️⃣ Disillusionment: Beauty is in the eye of the AI beholder

↳ Rapid tech improvements (e.g., coding) are more visible in Silicon Valley than to CEOs demanding real revenue or operational impact.

↳ Most companies lack integration capacity, high-quality data, controls, employee buy-in, and client acceptance for meaningful use.

↳ Agentic AI rollouts are far more complex than providing chatbots or copilots — workflows don’t integrate easily.

↳ The “trough of disillusionment” is here: hype fades, ROI disappoints, and scaling proves harder than promised.

2️⃣ Dislocation: AI of the storm

↳ 2026 brings bottlenecks, grid constraints, and severe talent scarcity — AI’s supply chain is the most complex in history.

↳ Hyperscalers keep investing heavily, and outside the US, sovereign AI pushes demand in the Middle East, Europe, and beyond.

↳ Investors will soon demand returns — 2026 could be make-or-break for standalone AI model makers.

↳ OpenAI faces extreme cash burn ($9B last year, ~$17B this year) with only a fraction of 800M weekly users paying — marginal costs keep rising.

3️⃣ Distrust: AI can’t get no satisfaction

↳ Anxiety escalates into lawsuits over copyright, privacy, data-centre impacts, and chatbot risks to young people.

↳ Scare stories and misuse examples will dominate headlines, amplifying public fears.

↳ Job displacement concerns intensify — credible studies show early evidence (e.g., 16% relative employment drop for recent graduates in AI-impacted roles).

↳ Fears of a US-China AI race grow, with China leading in cheap, open-source models (e.g., DeepSeek) that appeal to cost-sensitive, non-aligned countries.

Is it really that bad, or are these analysts looking at a glass as half empty rather than half full? 

♻️Repost to share AI's big challenge in 2026
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

AI in 2026: Disillusionment, Dislocation, Distrust 

IBM, with a practical guide on how to realize agentic AI ROI, that doesn’t just look at the barriers to attaining it, but asks the fundamental question: How do you define ROI?

2026 will be a make-or-break year for agentic AI, with users worldwide searching for its long-promised returns. 

IBM suggests that these users widen their search and acknowledge that agentic AI’s ROI should have many components beyond the one or two usually used. 

While the number one priority for most users is revenue growth, IBM prudently suggests considering productivity gains, employee and customer satisfaction, and cost reduction, along with special user-defined KPIs. 

IBM is on target, and the problem with the majority of surveys we saw on agentic AI returns in 2025 was that they tended to rely on revenue growth as the sole measure of return. 

The over-reliance on revenue in surveys and business has a simple origin. 

 It is a quantitative metric, easy to put on a questionnaire, and is easier to assess than more subtle measures like customer satisfaction or custom KPIs.

The problem is that by focusing on revenue, we are undercounting agentic AI’s potential benefits within the organization.

For example, an agentic AI that increases customer satisfaction and keeps bank customers from switching banks may not provide a revenue boost, but instead, prevents a fall. 

This is a problem that AI shares with innovation projects, where it is common to define new measures or KPIs to match the specifics of the innovation to judge its value.

IBM is one of the few to address this problem in this report and deserves credit for asking agentic AI users to look harder and wider for return.

This isn’t to say dollars are the wrong metric for agentic AI ROI, but they most definitely shouldn’t be the only metric. 

♻️Repost to share this great read on agentic AI ROI
#Fintech, #AI, and Tech at the speed of Asia and China.

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