Simon Torrance

Simon Torrance advises boards and leadership teams on agentic AI strategy. Agentic AI systems carry out work themselves – they read the file, take the decision and act – where earlier technology moved the paperwork and left the deciding to a person.

He works on the question most AI programmes never put to their board: which gains hold, and which disappear. Efficiency gains from agentic AI are real and arrive quickly. They are also available to every competitor at the same price, so they tend to reach customers as lower prices rather than the company as margin. The advantage that holds comes from something a company can only build itself: a record of how its own difficult decisions were made and why, read back at the point of the next decision. Simon calls the asset this creates Intelligence Capital.

He has worked on advanced agentic systems in production for more than two years, across insurance, financial services and other knowledge-intensive sectors. His firm is named AI Risk after the risk he judges most serious for large incumbents: being out-competed by rivals who use agentic AI better. He writes the newsletter Dispatches from the Agentic Frontier, read by around 6,000 subscribers (www.ai-risk.co/insights).

Before this, Simon spent 30 years in strategy, innovation and venture creation. He is a member of various World Economic Forum executive working groups, co-founder, founder of the Agentic AI summit, and co-author of FIGHTBACK: How to Win in the Digital Economy.