Attending the EY National AI Conference 2026 in Zurich.
Updated: Sep 28
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the EY National AI Conference 2026 in Zurich.
The event left me with a powerful mix of excitement about AI’s revolutionary potential and a healthy dose of anxiety about the dramatic changes it will bring to our lives and work in the very near future.
While much was discussed that sparked genuinely new ideas, one theme stood out strongly for me, especially given my experience building fintech products. #AgenticAI and #Vibecoding are no longer just futuristic concepts. Even with today’s still-limited capabilities, they are already being adopted across global financial institutions. The real mindset shift is realizing how quickly organizations can now build targeted solutions to solve real operational pain points, often in the time it takes to sit through an average meeting.
Here’s a practical, industry-agnostic example:
In day-to-day operations, we rely on production-grade tools that are either too generic or too narrow. There’s always that one or two missing features you wish you could add to truly solve your problem and boost output. Traditionally, convincing a vendor to build it is nearly impossible.
With AI, you can now rapidly create team-specific solutions with fully customizable functionality. You can iterate aggressively, test ideas in fast feedback loops, and walk away with a working MVP in under an hour, instead of wasting thousands of development hours on something that ultimately doesn’t work or becomes expensive to change once hardcoded.
And with Agentic AI on top? It feels like having your own consultancy firm running 24/7, dramatically driving efficiency, all at a monthly cost comparable to lunch on Bahnhofstrasse.
It’s impressive to see how Switzerland continues to pioneer in this space, providing a platform for truly open dialogue and a broad range of ideas and perspectives from business, technology, and research. Paired with local tech being so good, that it can actually enable digital sovereignty in the coming years.
A big thank you to EY Switzerland for hosting such a high-quality event, and to the excellent speakers who made complex concepts accessible:
Adrian Ott , Alexia Cambon (Microsoft), Katharina Jessa (Wandelbots), Imanol Schlag (ETH Zürich), Christian Sebregondi , Gupta Tulluri , Kai Waehner , Roger Spichiger , and many others.
Truly interesting times ahead! 🚀
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