Richard Piacentini

Over the last 25+ years, I’ve worked as a Founder, CTO, Head of Engineering, Chief Product Officer, and Software Architect across fintech, banking, publishing, government, and startups. Most of my career has been spent building software that people depend on to run their businesses, move money, and process transactions. One platform I architected and continue to guide processes over €500M in annual transaction volume. Today I’m Co-Founder & CTO at CHEQs, where I build AI-native financial infrastructure combining autonomous agents, stablecoins, smart contracts, and regulated payment systems. My current focus includes agentic systems, secure signing infrastructure, AI governance, LLM integration patterns, and the challenges of moving AI from proof-of-concept to production. Beyond financial infrastructure, I spend a significant amount of time working on AI systems, agent architectures, and enterprise adoption patterns. This includes AI governance, human-in-the-loop workflows, agent orchestration, retrieval systems, secure tool execution, Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, and the operational challenges of deploying AI in production environments. I am particularly interested in how organizations move from isolated AI experiments to systems that deliver measurable business value at scale. I hold five blockchain and AI infrastructure patent filings, including a granted patent covering non-custodial wallet key generation. Previously: • Co-founded Izibook in 2006, one of Europe’s early commercial Ruby on Rails platforms, still operating nearly 20 years later and serving major publishing groups. • Founded Sharkaroo, delivering fintech, digital asset, and Web3 infrastructure projects across Europe, Asia, and the United States. • Helped build the early Ruby on Rails community through RailsFrance and Paris on Rails in 2005, and later contributed to the growth of Rails in Asia from 2010 onward. I enjoy working at the intersection of technology, operations, regulation, and product strategy, particularly where emerging technologies must operate under real-world constraints.