I am an AI strategy, governance and venture advisor based in Dubai, and the founder of Cogmerce. I spent six years at the Abu Dhabi Investment Office managing a USD 1.5B+ AI portfolio. In that role I assessed 3,000+ startups and AI initiatives and ran accelerator programs with Microsoft GrowthX, Highway to 100 Unicorns and AWS CIC. I have trained 7,000+ executives in AI and built upskilling curricula for 48,000+ professionals across the UAE and the GCC, including as full-time faculty at the Majid Al Futtaim Leadership Institute. I also build and ship AI systems, from LLM and RAG tools for government to a production sentiment pipeline for a hedge fund. I am IAPP AIGP certified, hold BlueDot Impact's Technical AI Safety certification, and am a Research Group Member at the Center for AI and Digital Policy. My AI safety research has been accepted at IEEE SM'2026. Proposed session: From Pilot to Production: How Large Enterprises Actually Scale AI Track: Policy, Data & AI Audience: Executive leadership teams and professionals Format: 20 to 25 minute talk with Q&A. Happy to adapt to the program. Most large organizations now run dozens of AI pilots. Very few turn them into production systems that deliver measurable value. This session explains why that gap exists and what it takes to close it. It covers five areas: 1. Choosing the right use cases. Prioritizing by business value and feasibility, with clear owners and success metrics set before any build starts. 2. Technical design for scale. Moving from one-off projects to a shared platform with reusable components, model and API gateways, and evaluation tooling. 3. Data foundations. Data quality, access, lineage and ownership, and the pipelines that keep models fed with reliable data in production. 4. Operating model and adoption. Cross-functional teams, skills, change management, and measuring real usage instead of launch announcements. 5. AI safety, risk and governance. Guardrails, testing, human oversight and model risk management that satisfy regulators without slowing delivery. The same disciplines apply to governments, innovation hubs and large organizations across Africa. That ties the session directly to this year's theme of building sustainable institutions.