Trust in Motion revealed the AI readiness gap. Now take the next step.
Trust in Motion, at the Manhattan Classic Car Club, convened enterprise leaders to compare notes on what’s actually slowing AI in production. The consistent theme: model capability is no longer the constraint. Data foundations and governance systems are.
The AI constraint has shifted
Trust in Motion convened senior leaders across privacy, security, legal, data, and product to compare real-world experiences deploying AI inside complex enterprises. Discussion centered on blockers teams are encountering today: for most enterprises, the hardest part of scaling AI is not building models.
Across industries and roles, the same themes surfaced again and again. When foundations are unclear, every AI initiative inherits the same fundamental problems:
- Unknown or inconsistent data lineage and ownership
- Sensitive data exposure through new pipelines and tooling
- Unenforceable user preferences and consent across systems
- Manual, slow governance processes that cannot keep pace with deployment cycles
Skip the queue and book time with our Forward-Deployed Engineers for a free 15-minute AI Data Readiness Assessment. This is a special, limited-time offer following on from our Trust in Motion event.
What we heard repeatedly
Theme 1"AI governance starts before the model."
Teams need a reliable way to determine what data is being used, where it flows, and what rules apply before AI development accelerates.
Theme 2"The organization lacks a shared 'system of record' for AI readiness."
Legal, privacy, security, and engineering often operate with different definitions of readiness. Without shared controls and visibility, decisions slow down or become inconsistent.
Theme 3"Most readiness work is still manual."
Inventories, assessments, reviews, and vendor checks are frequently spreadsheet-driven. That approach cannot scale to the cadence of modern AI deployment.
Theme 4"Risk is increasingly operational."
The largest failures are rarely theoretical. They show up as broken enforcement, incomplete inventories, inconsistent policy implementation, and unclear accountability across distributed systems.
Theme 5"The urgency is increasing."
Regulatory expectations and internal governance standards are converging. Many teams are realizing they need to assess readiness earlier, even before new AI workloads ship.
We’ve reached a moment where machines are making decisions at a speed and scale that human governance processes were never designed to match. The real question isn’t whether AI is powerful enough. It’s whether the systems underneath it are trustworthy enough to operate safely in real time.”Cillian Kieran, Founder & CEO, Ethyca
What this means for you
A simple test: can you answer these questions quickly? If your organization is preparing to scale AI in 2026, pressure-test your current foundations:
- Do we know where sensitive data exists across systems and vendors?
- Can we explain how that data reaches AI workflows, including new tools?
- Can we enforce policy and user preferences consistently across the stack?
- Can we demonstrate controls without weeks of manual work?
- Do we have a repeatable process to evaluate new AI use cases?
If any of these require heroic effort, you don’t have an AI problem. You have a readiness problem.
Book a 15-minute AI Data Readiness Assessment
A short working session designed for enterprise teams who need a fast, concrete view of where readiness breaks down. Here's what you'll get:
- A structured set of readiness checkpoints across data, governance, and enforcement
- A clear view of the most common failure modes for AI scale
- A pragmatic next-step recommendation tailored to your environment
- Optional follow-up: a deeper technical session if it’s warranted
This is not a sales demo. It’s a diagnostic conversation with engineers who work alongside Fortune 5000 teams across industries, giving you an external perspective on AI readiness before decisions accelerate in the new year. Click now to reserve your time.
Ethyca is the trusted data layer for enterprise AI, providing unified privacy, governance, and AI oversight infrastructure that enables organizations to confidently scale AI initiatives while maintaining compliance across evolving regulatory landscapes.
Book an intro with Ethyca to see how embedded governance can transform your AI development into a true competitive advantage.
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