EVENT

From AI Hype to Business Impact

11 November 2026 | National Bank of Romania, Bucharest

For three years, Artificial Intelligence has been the loudest promise in technology. In 2026, the conversation changes. The question is no longer “What can AI do?” but “What is AI actually delivering — and for whom?”

Enterprises have moved past the experiment. The winners of this new phase are no longer those with the most pilots, but those turning intelligence into measurable outcomes — into revenue, resilience, productivity and trust. At the same time, a new generation of autonomous, agentic systems is beginning to act on our behalf; Europe is racing to secure its own compute, data and energy; regulators are drawing the lines of accountability; and every leadership team is rethinking what work, and the workforce, will look like.

The CIO Council National Conference 2026 brings together the technology and business leaders shaping this transition. Over one day at the National Bank of Romania, through focused 20-minute talks and sharp, no-spin panels, we move the debate from hype to impact — and from slideware to the P&L.

This is the year intelligence has to pay off. This is Return on Intelligence.

Key Themes

  • The AI Reckoning — Measuring the value of AI — moving from pilots to production, and from cost to return on intelligence.
  • Agentic AI at Work — Autonomous and multi-agent systems entering production, and the new questions of control, orchestration and accountability.
  • AI in Finance & Regulated Industries — Fraud, credit, risk, GenAI and compliance in banking and other regulated industries — innovating under the EU AI Act and DORA.
  • Sovereign AI & Digital Sovereignty — Europe's race for compute, data centres, energy and independence from foreign hyperscalers — and what it means for national players.
  • Responsible & Trustworthy AI — Governance, trust, security and the EU AI Act as a competitive advantage rather than a burden.
  • AI & the Future of Work — White-collar disruption, reskilling and the human-plus-machine operating model.
  • AI Infrastructure & Data Foundations — The platforms, data foundations, cloud and infrastructure that make scalable AI possible.
  • Innovation & Startups — Foundation models, open-source AI and the next tech disruptors in Central & Eastern Europe.

Who Should Attend

CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and CISOs; AI, data and automation leaders; heads of risk, compliance and governance; and business executives determined to lead their organisations through the next phase of the AI economy.

Event Details

Date: 11 November 2026
Location: National Bank of Romania, Bucharest
Format: By invitation only – Request an invitation.

The future of cybersecurity is now—are you ready to defend it?

AGENDA


0900 - 0950

Registration & Welcome Coffee

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0950 - 1000

Opening speech

Moderator: Yugo Neumorni, CIO Council President

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1000 - 1020

Title Session:

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Speaker: TBC

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1020 - 1040

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1040 - 1125

PANEL1: The AI Reckoning: From Pilots to P&L

$2 trillion spent, most pilots showing zero return — is enterprise AI a bubble, or just badly deployed?

Synopsis

The hype cycle has met the balance sheet. Widely cited research in 2025–2026 found that roughly 95% of enterprise generative-AI pilots delivered no measurable financial return, even as global AI spending approached $2 trillion — and analysts expect a large share of AI projects launched in 2024–2025 to be defunded for failing to prove value. Yet a minority of organisations report triple-digit ROI. So what separates the two? This panel cuts through the noise to ask what real, booked value from AI looks like, why so many initiatives stall between pilot and production, and how leaders should budget, measure and communicate AI in a year when patience — and capital — is running out.

Key discussion threads

  • The "95% zero-ROI" studies — myth, measurement problem, or genuine warning?
  • How should a CIO calculate the real ROI of AI?
  • Which AI use cases have actually delivered measurable results?
  • Why pilots die between the lab and production: legacy integration, data readiness, missing business owners.
  • Defining and measuring return on intelligence: productivity, revenue, risk, cost-to-serve.
  • The build-vs-buy-vs-wait dilemma and the discipline of killing failing projects early.
  • Bubble economics: what happens to budgets, vendors and expectations if the correction comes.
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1125 - 1150

Coffee Break 

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1150 - 1220

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Speaker: TBC

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1220 - 1240

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1240 - 1325

PANEL2: The Agentic Enterprise: When Software Starts to Act

AI agents are moving from demo to production — but when an autonomous agent makes the wrong call, who is accountable?

Synopsis

2026 is the year the industry shifts from chatbots that answer to agents that act — booking, buying, reconciling, coding and orchestrating other agents. Adoption surveys report a majority of enterprises now running at least one agent in production, with open protocols emerging as the standard for agent-to-agent communication. But autonomy raises the stakes: multi-agent systems are harder to observe, test and control, and a widely noted "governance gap" means capability is racing ahead of oversight. This panel explores where agents are already delivering, the architecture and guardrails that make them safe to deploy, and the uncomfortable question of accountability when software acts on its own.

Key discussion threads

  • From copilots to autonomous and multi-agent systems: what genuinely works in production today.
  • Highest-value early use cases: customer service, finance ops, software engineering, back-office automation.
  • Orchestration, observability, testing and "human-in-the-loop" vs "human-on-the-loop".
  • The governance gap: identity, permissions and audit trails for non-human actors.
  • Liability and trust: who owns the outcome when an agent errs — the vendor, the deployer, or the CIO?
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1325 - 1415

Networking lunch

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1415 - 1500

PANEL 3: AI in Finance & Regulated Industries: Innovating Under the Rules

Banks want to move fast on AI. Regulators, the EU AI Act and DORA say "prove it's safe first." Who wins?

Synopsis

Nowhere is the tension between AI ambition and accountability sharper than in banking and other regulated sectors — a fitting debate to host at the National Bank of Romania. Financial institutions are deploying AI for fraud detection, credit scoring, AML, personalised service and productivity, while operating under intensifying rules: the EU AI Act classes many credit and risk use cases as "high-risk," and DORA raises the bar on operational resilience. With the AI Act's high-risk timeline itself being reshaped by the EU's Digital Omnibus, institutions must innovate against a moving regulatory target. This panel asks how regulated players turn compliance from a brake into a competitive advantage — and where the real red lines should be.

Key discussion threads

  • Proven AI value in finance: fraud, AML, credit decisioning, forecasting, customer experience, productivity.
  • High-risk AI under the EU AI Act, plus DORA and model-risk expectations — and the shifting Omnibus timeline.
  • Explainability, bias and the "computer says no" problem in credit and insurance decisions.
  • GenAI on sensitive financial data: data residency, confidentiality and third-party model risk.
  • Compliance as differentiator: can trust and governance become a selling point, not just a cost?
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1500 - 1520

Title Session:

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Speaker: TBC

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1520 - 1540

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1540 - 1620

PANEL 4: Sovereign AI & The AI Foundation: Europe's Race for Compute, Energy & Independence

Europe writes the rules for AI but runs on someone else's chips, clouds and models. Can it change that — and at what cost?

Synopsis

AI sovereignty is no longer only about where data is stored. It is about who controls the entire AI foundation — cloud, compute, chips, data, models, infrastructure and energy — and how secure and trusted that foundation is.

Europe is pushing for greater technological autonomy while enterprises remain highly dependent on non-European hyperscalers, chipmakers and foundation models. At the same time, the AI boom is driving unprecedented demand for data centres, GPU capacity and energy, making infrastructure itself a strategic asset.

For CIOs, the question is increasingly practical: where should critical AI workloads run, who controls the underlying technology and data, and how do we keep them secure and trusted?

This panel will explore whether Europe — and Romania — can build the sovereign, scalable and secure AI foundation needed to compete in the global AI economy.

Key discussion threads

  • Sovereign AI beyond data residency: control over cloud, compute, data, models and infrastructure.
  • The AI Foundation: cloud, GPU/compute capacity, data centres, connectivity and AI-ready data.
  • Energy as AI infrastructure: can power availability and grids support the coming compute boom?
  • Secure & Trusted AI: cybersecurity, data protection, identity and resilience across the AI stack.
  • European strategic autonomy: reducing critical dependencies without sacrificing innovation and scale.
  • Romania's opportunity: sovereign cloud, data centres, energy and the potential to become a regional AI infrastructure hub.
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1620 - 1650

CIO Council Awards ceremony II edition

SPEAKERS

MODERATORS

PARTNERS

REGISTRATION for The AI Digital World. Reimagine the Future of Business.

REGISTRATION for From AI Hype to Business Impact

The CIO Council Cybersecurity Forum is an exclusive, by-invitation-only gathering, designed for senior IT professionals, C-level executives, and decision-makers from leading organizations. To ensure a high-value experience for all participants, attendance is reserved for “end-user” professionals—we do not accept vendor or sales representatives unless part of the official sponsorship program.

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Location:

Bucharest
Palatul BNR, Lipscani 25

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