Zug, Switzerland · AI Transformation

I Help Companies
Stop Doing AI
And Start Using It.

Most companies are spending millions on AI and can't point to a single changed decision. I've seen why — from inside the infrastructure, not a PowerPoint deck. I write about it every week.

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What I believe

I believe most AI transformation initiatives are failing not because the technology is wrong, but because the organisations around them haven't changed.

I believe the most important AI conversation isn't happening in the model layer — it's happening in the infrastructure layer, the organisational design layer, and the decision-making layer that executives are too busy to look at.

I believe Europe is building AI differently — with constraints that the US commentariat dismisses as obstacles, and that are quietly becoming advantages.

I believe the perspective that matters most comes from operators. People who've shipped real systems, managed real costs, and made real decisions when things broke at 3am. That's the perspective I bring.

Marcus Maute
AI Transformation Strategist · Zug, Switzerland
Posts per week, consistently
70%
Of DT initiatives failed — AI repeats it
€2M
Avg. AI spend with nothing to show
1
Name. One brand. marcusmaute.com
Where I plant my flag
Four positions.
Repeated relentlessly.

Experts become known for a handful of strongly-held positions, not a broad encyclopaedia. These are mine.

01
Infrastructure
The layer nobody talks about is the one that kills you
Everyone obsesses over the model. GPT-4 vs Claude. Fine-tune vs RAG. Meanwhile data pipelines are breaking and inference costs are going to 10× at scale. I talk about the boring layer — because that's where companies actually fail.
02
Org Design
Bad org design kills more AI than bad models
The biggest AI failure mode isn't the technology. It's creating an AI team and watching every business unit wait to be served. Digital transformation failed for the same reason — and executives who lived through that already know this fear.
03
European Lens
Europe's constraints are becoming its competitive advantage
I watch European companies navigate regulatory, cultural, and structural constraints that the US commentariat dismisses as obstacles. I write about why they're becoming advantages — for a DACH audience that's underserved by US-centric AI media.
04
Web3 Parallel
Web3 solved decentralised infrastructure. AI should learn from it
I've operated in both worlds. The parallels — and the cautionary lessons — between what the Web3 infrastructure wave got right and what AI is about to face are sharper than anyone in the AI space currently admits.
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This is how
I write.

First-person. Specific. From real situations. If this resonates, the newsletter is 300 words of this every Monday.

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Marcus Maute AI Transformation · Zug, CH
A CFO told me last month: "We've spent €2M on AI and I can't point to a single changed decision." She wasn't anti-AI. She was genuinely frustrated. We spent an hour mapping her company's actual decision flows. Not the org chart — the real map of who decides what, how fast, and based on what information. Every AI initiative had been optimising for tasks that weren't bottlenecks. The real bottleneck? Pricing decisions that took 3 weeks and 4 layers of approval. One AI initiative, properly targeted, would have paid for the €2M in a quarter. AI transformation isn't about deploying AI everywhere. It's about finding the 2–3 places where better, faster decisions create outsized value. The €2M isn't the problem. The target selection is.
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Speaking & Advisory
Work
with me.

I speak from an operator's perspective — which means I tell your leadership team what they need to hear, not what sounds good in a conference hall. Small number of engagements per quarter.

The AI Transformation StackWhy most AI initiatives die in production — and the infrastructure layer that actually ships.
Don't Repeat Digital TransformationThe playbook that failed 70% of companies — and how AI is repeating it, faster.
AI Org Design for ExecutivesStructure your organisation for AI that compounds — not AI that creates a bottleneck with a job title.
Europe's AI AdvantageWhy European constraints are quietly becoming a competitive edge. A DACH-specific lens.

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touch

Planning a leadership offsite, executive programme, or board briefing? Reach out directly. I respond personally.

Keynotes — 30 to 60 min
Executive workshops — half day
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What people say
The reaction.

"Marcus said in one post what we'd been trying to articulate in three board meetings. His infrastructure framing changed how we're thinking about our entire AI roadmap."

CTO, DACH Manufacturing Co.
LinkedIn reaction

"The DT comparison piece is the most useful thing I've read on AI transformation this year. Sent it to our entire leadership team before our strategy offsite."

Chief Transformation Officer
Newsletter subscriber

"Finally someone who talks about what actually breaks in production, not just the demo layer. Marcus writes like he's been in the room — because he has."

VP Engineering, Series B
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