September 17, New York, USA – Sigma Software hosted the first edition of the AI Practitioner Summit, with 70+ engineering, technology, and operations leaders discussing what happens when companies move AI beyond experiments and into everyday operations.
The event brought together participants from leading organizations, including HUMAN, Snowflake, AWS, DocuSign, Ipsos, NEAR AI, Locality, FreeWheel, CMI Media Group, and many others.
For companies already using AI, the question is no longer simply where to apply it. Once AI moves into production, the questions become much more practical: How does it change operations and engineering? How do you manage security and compliance? How do you understand the costs? And how do you scale adoption across teams?
These were some of the questions discussed at the summit, with sessions on operational transformation, AI security and cost visibility, and the shift from AI-assisted development to agentic engineering.
The program also included specific implementation cases. Snowflake shared its experience with expanding access to data and moving toward what it calls “data agency.” NEAR AI presented its approach to building a private “company brain” using private inference, secure agent harnesses, and sovereign infrastructure.
Not everything was about what worked. One session asked two practitioners a simple question: What is your biggest AI regret? The idea was to talk about decisions people would make differently today, not just successful implementations.
That was also the thinking behind the AI Practitioner Summit. There is already plenty of discussion about what AI could do. We wanted to hear from people who could talk about what they are doing with it, including what worked, what didn’t, and what they are still figuring out.
Sigma Software joined the discussion with experience from our own AI transformation and from working with clients on AI products, engineering, and business processes.
The first summit covered a lot of ground, but the common thread was practical: once AI moves beyond pilots, the work is no longer only about the technology. It is also about how companies operate, control costs and risks, and change the way their teams work.
Katherine Tuluzova, CEO at Sigma Software, said:
Thank you to everyone who joined us in New York and contributed to the discussion.
