Interview with Dorothy Creaven and Michael Cordner at AWS re:Invent

Dublin-based startup Jentic was the first Irish company to complete the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, which concluded recently at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. The company is now focused on building enterprise awareness of its platform, supported by the launch of its AI Readiness Scorecard and its listing on AWS Marketplace.

Founded in 2024 by Sean Blanchfield, Michael Cordner, and Dorothy Creaven, Jentic applies middleware and enterprise integration engineering to AI adoption, focusing on how APIs are defined, governed and safely executed by automated and agentic systems.

AI adoption with API readiness platform Jentic

Jentic operates at the integration layer, working with existing enterprise systems and APIs to make them clearer, more structured and more governable. This allows organisations to connect AI systems to real business infrastructure in a controlled and observable way, without replacing existing platforms or bypassing established security and compliance processes.

Built on Enterprise Infrastructure Experience

The company's approach is shaped by the founders' backgrounds in building large-scale infrastructure. Blanchfield previously co-founded Demonware, acquired by Activision Blizzard, and PageFair. Cordner co-founded Mindconnex, while Creaven previously led Rent the Runway's Irish operations.

Speaking to Irish Tech News at AWS re:Invent, Michael Cordner, CTO of Jentic, said many enterprises are now encountering limits in how their systems were originally built.

"We got away with cutting corners for 20 years when we were developing APIs for developers," said Cordner . "But now we're trying to let AI loose on those same APIs, and the standards are much more stringent. Even the most intelligent AI in the world is useless without the right information on how to actually use a system."

From Jentic's perspective, the current interest in AI exposes long-standing weaknesses in enterprise integration. Automated systems can reason and decide, but they can only act through APIs. If those interfaces are poorly documented, inconsistently structured or weakly governed, behaviour becomes unpredictable.

"We're a business logic and infrastructure layer for AI agents," explains Dorothy Creaven, COO of Jentic. "Software has always been built on APIs, but for AI to connect properly to enterprise systems, there has to be something that can make sense of those APIs and turn them into workflows organisations can rely on."

Addressing Enterprise Control and Governance

A recurring issue Jentic encounters with enterprise customers is organisational hesitation. Senior leadership often wants progress on AI strategy, while technology and security teams are concerned about control, traceability and risk.

"Everyone is afraid to let AI loose in their organisation," Creaven observes. "There's a real concern about what systems might do when nobody is watching, whether actions can be traced, and how failures are handled."

To address this, Jentic's platform includes a sandboxed execution environment that mirrors production APIs. This allows organisations to test AI-driven workflows, observe behaviour and understand failure modes before anything is connected to live systems.

"We provide an environment that mirrors real APIs, but in a way that's safe," Creaven comments. "You can see exactly what's happening, with auditability and logging, and you can only move forward once you're confident the behaviour is correct."

Launch of the AI Readiness Scorecard

This approach underpins the launch of Jentic's AI Readiness Scorecard, a free, automated assessment tool introduced at AWS re:Invent. The scorecard evaluates APIs across multiple dimensions, including structure, security, documentation quality and discoverability.

According to Jentic, its analysis of more than 1,500 well-known APIs highlights repeated gaps. These include missing authentication details, invalid OpenAPI specifications, i...