The convergence of AI and IoT is reshaping how technical leaders approach industrial systems architecture. Bernd Groß, CEO and co-founder of Cumulocity, shares insights from building Germany's leading IoT platform—from its origins as a Nokia spin-off to becoming a critical infrastructure for companies managing tens of thousands of connected industrial assets.

This conversation explores the unique engineering challenges of industrial IoT, where systems must process 50 terabytes of monthly data from wind turbines while maintaining real-time control capabilities. Bernd discusses the evolution from monolithic architectures to microservices, the complexity of supporting hundreds of industrial protocols, and the emerging "AI-IoT" paradigm.

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Technical infrastructure enables the modern energy transition. Barbara Wittenberg, CTO at 1KOMMA5°, reveals the engineering challenges behind connecting and optimizing 40,000+ household energy assets while building a unified tech platform after acquiring 80+ companies across 7 countries.

Tech leaders will find valuable parallels to their own challenges as Barbara discusses how her team modernized legacy systems, managed complex integrations, and deployed advanced optimization algorithms that must respond in milliseconds to prevent grid failures.

Key technical insights include:

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In this episode, Tobi chats with Adam Schuck, Senior Engineering Director at Canva, a company that has scaled to over 5,000 employees, 2,000+ engineers, and 230 million MAUs while remaining profitable. Adam shares his journey through startups (including acquisitions by Twitter and Canva) and large tech companies like Google, leading to his current role managing 220 engineers at Canva.

They dive deep into the challenges and strategies behind Canva's hypergrowth, including:

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In this episode, Tobi talks with Georg Zoeller, Co-Founder of the Centre for AI Leadership and mercenaries.ai, about the turbulent landscape of AI. Georg, with his background at Meta and deep expertise in AI strategy, cuts through the hype surrounding AI's capabilities and economic impact.

They discuss the 'singularity' we're already in, driven by rapid, open-source AI development, and why this makes future predictions impossible. Georg argues that software engineering is being commoditized due to the vast amount of training data available (Stack Overflow, GitHub), making AI adept at code generation but raising profound security concerns like prompt injection.

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In this episode, Tobi talks with Ivan Kusalic, CTO of Enpal, who leads a team of 250 engineers at one of Germany's leading solar energy companies. Ivan shares insights from his extensive technical leadership journey and his recent return to coding after seven years due to his excitement about AI.

Ivan discusses how he navigates complexity and ambiguity in the renewable energy sector, where Enpal builds systems to help households manage solar panels, batteries, EV chargers, and heat pumps as integrated energy solutions. He explains the challenges of coordinating with Germany's fragmented energy grid infrastructure and how Enpal's Virtual Power Plant stabilizes the grid by coordinating household energy consumption in real-time.

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Discover insights into building a high-performance engineering organization with Stefan Richter, founder of freiheit.com technologies. With 25+ years of experience delivering successful software projects for the Who’s Who of European businesses and industries, Stefan shares his philosophy of radical engineering culture and maintaining an exceptionally high bar in recruiting. This episode dives deep into how freiheit.com has achieved their "Never Late, Never Failed" mission through disciplined processes, carefully selected talent, and a relentless focus on simplicity.

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AI is moving faster than ever, and staying ahead of the curve is a challenge for every tech leader. In this episode, Dat Tran joins Tobi to break down what’s happening in the AI space, from cutting-edge model releases to AI-powered productivity tools and the global race for AI dominance. Dat has spent years leading AI teams at Idealo and Axel Springer, co-founding AI-driven startups, and now helps companies make sense of AI without the fluff.

Together, they explore the latest AI trends, the reality behind AI agents, and how engineering teams can actually get more done with AI today.

🚀 Dat’s journey in AI and tech leadership – From hacking on machine learning before it was cool to leading AI at Axel Springer and co-founding AI startups

If you’re a CTO, AI enthusiast, or just trying to keep up with the latest AI breakthroughs, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

00:00 Introduction to Alphalist Podcast

How do you create an effective platform team and optimize DevOps? Tobi interviews Camille Fournier about her career, technical insights, and best practices in platform engineering. Camille shares her journey from building her own computers and installing Linux in high school to becoming Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase and authoring influential books for engineers 📚.

👩‍💻 Camille's early fascination with computers and engineering, including building her own systems and installing Linux

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00:00 Welcome to the Alphalist Podcast

Ever wondered how regulated companies like stock exchanges handle tech growth? Dennis Winter (CTO @ Börse Stuttgart) shares how to build engineering organizations in regulated environments. With experience from embedded systems to leading tech at SolarisBank and Börse Stuttgart, he dives deep into scaling teams while maintaining security and compliance standards 🏦

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00:00 Welcome to the Alphalist Podcast

Get insight into the SDK business (and learn about cross-platform performance and developer marketing) with Dr. Daniel Hauschildt (MD & CPTO at IMG.LY). As a client-side offering (no servers!), IMG.LY needs to take extra steps to ensure reliability on all devices 📱, platforms 💻 and browsers 🌐. From crafting developer-friendly documentation to optimizing performance on every device and platform imaginable, Daniel shares hard-earned insights from the SDK business.

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