Main CTO Day 2026

On October 1st, 2026, we hosted the Main CTO Day at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. This annual event brings together CTOs and technology leaders from across our portfolio and network to exchange insights, discuss emerging trends, and share experiences on scaling and leading technology organizations.

Key learnings from the day

• Engineering organizations at the speed of AI – Suzanne Daniels, Microsoft
  AI is changing more than developer productivity. Engineering leaders need to rethink how teams operate, collaborate, and make decisions as AI becomes increasingly embedded in software development. The opportunity lies in redesigning engineering organizations around this new way of working, rather than simply adding AI tools to existing processes.
• Multiplayer Software Engineering – Freek Lemmers & Andres Salinero Jeffrey, Slack
  Software engineering is becoming increasingly collaborative between people and AI agents. As this shift accelerates, effectively sharing knowledge and context becomes critical to enabling teams and agents to work together and translate AI capabilities into meaningful value.
• Becoming AI-native – Matias Undurraga Breitling, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  Becoming AI-native requires more than adding AI to existing workflows; it means rethinking the operating model itself. Developers increasingly move from builders towards orchestrators, defining intent and guardrails while AI executes more of the work at scale.
  
• Building reliable agentic systems – Samer Albadry, Snowflake
  Successful agentic systems require the right balance between AI autonomy and deterministic architecture. As agents take on more responsibility, strong context, reliable data, and a shared source of truth become essential to achieving consistent and trustworthy outcomes.
  
• Rethinking software quality in the age of AI – Fireside Chat with Ferranti Computer Systems & Main Capital Partners
  As AI increasingly writes and reads code and automated guardrails become stronger, the role of developers may shift from reviewing every line of code towards validating outcomes, architecture, and guardrails. This also changes how technology leaders should think about engineering capacity and technology investments.

At Main, we bring CTOs and Lead Developers across our portfolio together to exchange experiences, challenge perspectives, and learn from one another. This year’s discussions showed that the future of software engineering is not simply about adopting AI tools, it is about rethinking how software companies organize teams, build products, and create value in an increasingly agentic world.