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CIONET - What's next

Connecting ambitious digital leaders and businesses around the globe.

Catch up on the upcoming CIONET Events

             
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Netherlands Nov 10, 2025 Public Physical english

Reis mee: CIO Innovation trip Web Summit 11 nov 2025 Lissabon

CIONET Nederland vertrekt met een groep Nederlandse CIO's en digital leaders 10 t/m 12 november 2025 voor de geheel verzorgde CIO Innovation Trip naar de Web Summit in Lissabon, Portugal. Reis jij mee of neem je collega(s) mee!

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Germany Nov 11, 2025 Country Members Physical english

München: The Agentic Advantage

On the eve of the ServiceNow World Forum, CIONET invites you to an exclusive dinner in the fabulous Restaurant Little London in the heart of Munich City. Join leading CIOs, CDOs, and ServiceNow product owners for a candid exchange on how to get the most from your ServiceNow investment.

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Switzerland Nov 12, 2025 Country Members Physical english

Zurich: Mastering Digital Sovereignty

CIONET invites you to a private dinner with a select group of enterprise CIOs and senior infrastructure leaders in Zurich – part of a multi-country dialogue series with IT executives across Europe. This strategic dialogue is designed for digital leaders to share insights on one of the most pressing challenges facing today's leaders: How can organisations build true digital sovereignty in the face of geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory pressure, and growing technological dependencies?

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Germany Nov 13, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Frankfurt: CIDO Women - Female Leadership Circle

Bauen Sie mit uns ein starkes Netzwerk führender WOMEN CIDOs aus der IT- und Technologiebranche auf! Unser zweites Treffen findet im PwC Experience Center in Frankfurt statt.

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Belgium Nov 13, 2025 Country Members Physical english

The New CISO - CIONET Belgium: Community Event

The Role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) The role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is no longer confined to securing the network perimeter. As organisations become more digitally connected and data-driven, the CISO’s responsibilities have expanded far beyond traditional security measures. Today’s CISO must not only defend against cyber threats but also enable the business to innovate securely, manage complex regulatory environments, and instill a culture of trust across the organisation. This event will explore the evolving role of the CISO as a strategic leader who balances security with business enablement. As digital transformation accelerates, how can CISOs align their security strategies with organisational goals, ensure compliance, and lead their teams in the fight against increasingly sophisticated threats? Key Discussion Points: From Gatekeeper to Strategic Partner: How CISOs can shift from being seen as barriers to innovation to becoming key enablers of business agility and transformation through security. Balancing Risk and Innovation: Learn how top CISOs navigate the delicate balance between mitigating risk and supporting the organisation’s need to innovate and scale in a secure environment. Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): Explore how CISOs are managing an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, ensuring compliance while still driving business objectives forward. Building a Security-First Culture: Practical strategies for CISOs to foster a culture where security is embedded into every part of the business, from boardroom discussions to frontline operations. CISO as Crisis Manager: How to prepare for and lead your organisation through major cybersecurity incidents. From ransomware attacks to data breaches, we’ll discuss how today’s CISO is as much a crisis manager as they are a strategist. Why You Should Attend: As a CISO, your role is evolving faster than ever before. This event is designed to provide you with actionable insights into how to embrace your expanded responsibilities while keeping your organisation safe and secure. Whether you’re focused on aligning security with business goals, navigating regulatory challenges, or leading in times of crisis, this event will equip you with the strategies to lead the next era of cybersecurity.

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UK Nov 13, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english

Engineering the AI-Native enterprise: From legacy burden to innovation engine

Join us on November 13th for the exclusive roundtable powered by Cognizant.

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Recent Cases

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Character.AI and Google Cloud Partner to Build the Next Generation of Conversational AI

Character.AI is using Google Cloud gen AI infrastructure to deliver new conversational AI features faster.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and PALO ALTO, Calif., May 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Character.AI, a full stack conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that gives consumers access to their own deeply personalized superintelligence, today announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud and has selected it as its preferred cloud infrastructure to build and train sophisticated AI models with advanced reasoning and greater accuracy.

The field of generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), has made remarkable advancements in recent months and has proven to be a game-changer in AI by serving as the foundational model that outperforms previous algorithms in most natural language and text generation tasks. Character.AI is using Google Cloud generative AI and LLM infrastructure to meet the needs of its rapidly growing community of creators. By combining its own AI capabilities with those of Google Cloud, Character.AI will enhance the customer experience by inspiring imagination, discovery and understanding.

As part of the partnership, Character.AI will use Google Cloud's Tensor Processor Units (TPUs) to train and infer LLMs faster and more efficiently. Google Cloud TPUs are purpose-built to accelerate AI training and inference, speeding up the most computationally-intensive workloads with more than 100 petaflops of performance in a single pod. By leveraging Google Cloud TPUs, Character.AI can take advantage of the same reliable, secure, and highly scalable infrastructure that powers Google Search, YouTube, and other Google services. Character.AI will also employ Google Cloud's new A3 VMs running on NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, a combination that uniquely enables customers to tackle any AI workload with speed and flexibility and provides customer optionality between TPUs and GPUs to meet their needs.

"We've recognized the power and strength of Google Cloud's technology from day one," said Noam Shazeer, CEO, Character.AI. "As we continue our growth trajectory, working with Google Cloud's AI technologies was the obvious choice, allowing us to rapidly expand our compute abilities so we can deliver new features and capabilities to millions of users."

Character.AI today uses Google Cloud for core infrastructure and is leveraging Google Cloud's PostgreSQL-compatible database, AlloyDB, for increased operational uptime, speed, and flexibility. Looking ahead, Character.AI will soon deploy Google Cloud Spanner, a high availability and high performance database, to help scale its service to additional regions.

"We're offering Google Cloud's industry leading infrastructure, Google foundation models and AI tooling  to companies across industries so they can build, train and deploy the future of AI creatively, reliably and at scale," said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. "Character.AI's cutting-edge conversational AI technology is creating entirely new opportunities to transform how we interact with AI systems, and we are thrilled to be their partner as they continue to scale their vision."

Character.AI was founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who are two of the world's foremost experts in conversational AI. Noam's previous work is central to the current revolution in LLMs, while Daniel's is related to building large-scale NLP and deep learning programs. Bringing together their expertise with Google Cloud's cutting-edge technology will allow Character.AI to scale and bring this intelligence to consumers across the world at scale.

Join the growing community of millions who are experiencing the value of personalized AI at https://beta.character.ai. To learn more about the AI infrastructure powering the Character.ai platform, visit cloud.google.com/tpu.

 

Additional Resources

  • Keep up with the latest Google Cloud news on our newsroom and blog.
  • Learn more about Google Cloud TPUs here.

 

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

 

About Character.AI

Founded in 2021 by artificial intelligence researchers and former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI is a conversational artificial intelligence platform that uses large language models, deep learning algorithms that can recognize, summarize, translate, predict, and generate text and other content, to provide individuals with a personalized artificial intelligence experience. The platform lets anyone create and engage with Characters, allowing users to build their own, personalized use cases and share them with others. For more information, visit: https://beta.character.ai/

SOURCE Google Cloud

Checkout our CIONET COOKBOOK

cookbook

Embark on a culinary journey through the ever-evolving world of digital leadership with our third edition of the CIONET Cookbook: Recipes for Digital Success. Unveiling the intricate trilemma faced by today’s Master Chefs, our trailblazing European CIOs address a challenge at the nexus of customer interests, digital transformation strategies, and IT modernisation. Their secret? Synchronising the gearing between customer, business, and technology to create a frictionless movement through the digital landscape.

The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology, with the CIO as Master Chef. In order to provide the best service to its customers, a top restaurant must have the right atmosphere, an inviting menu, a well-equipped kitchen, talented and committed front-of-house and kitchen staff and smooth-running processes that ensure an enjoyable experience for diners.

CIONET TV

 
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Giuseppe Ficara - The Untold Story of Amplifon's Data & AI Transformation

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Jesús Oliva, Head of Data & AI at Moeve - From Data Challenges to AI Leadership

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Radosław Maćkiewicz - CEO at COI - Empowering Citizens Through Digital Innovation

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Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge

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Isabelle Droll - CIO for Airline, Corporate, Hotels & Resorts and Sustainability at TUI - Data, Diversity, and Destinations

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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking

CIONET Reports

 
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How CIOs drive game changing results at scale?

The role of the CIO has evolved from managing systems to shaping outcomes: growth, resilience, and competitive edge are now won or lost in the technology arena. Today ’ s CIOs must balance stability with innovation, control costs while attracting scarce talent, and modernise legacy infrastructure while adopting emerging technologies.

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A research proposal_AI and the Human Experience

As AI transitions from a specialised tool to an all-pervasive force, understanding its profound implications for our human lives is no longer merely academic but an urgent imperative for social well-being and strategic preparedness.

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Cybersecurity in critical infrastructure

Geopolitical tensions have dominated the headlines for over two years now. In this context, the cyber threat landscape is also evolving rapidly. The protection and security of critical infrastructure – both physical and digital – is becoming increasingly important.

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Anna Kopp (1)

Anna Kopp

Head of IT Germany and Regional Office Lead Munich, Microsoft

“The CIONET App allows us to learn from eachother and and find the courage to be authentic by hearing stories from others! Thanks to Tobias and the whole team for bringing us together:-) ”
Mauricio Amaro

Mauricio Amaro

IT Director, IT Thinker

“The main things that I would like to get from our community of Digital Leaders are: networking, share experiences, share best practices and successful cases, and comments and recommendations about providers.”
Vijay Anand

Vijay Anand

Vice president IT & Compliance, VisionaryRCM (A Carlyle Grp Company)

“The CIONET app provides a really cool platform to network and share insights.”

About CIONET

CIONET’s mission is to help IT executives become more at ease and above all more successful in their jobs. So they can do more than just keep up with change but ultimately define it. CIONET opens up a whole new universe of opportunities in IT management.

With the largest membership of corporate digital leaders across Europe, Latin America, US and Australia, CIONET has the expertise and pioneering vision to solve or address any IT management challenge.

Why join CIONET?

From our local and global events, from our publications and research to our executive education programmes, everything we do is aimed at making sure digital leaders maximise their potential.

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with digital leaders who share your interests, who face the same challenges, who care about the same topics.

Share

stories, experiences, and ideas around our shared mission.

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from our exclusive events, publications and research.

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inspiration, thought-provoking conversations, expert perspectives and exclusive first-hand content each and every day

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and make better, more well-informed decisions on how to lead your digital business.

Maximise

your potential. Realise your ambitions.

About CIONET

Join CIONET

We'd love to welcome you as the newest member of our CIONET community where Digital Leaders unite. 

You can either send us a registered handwritten letter explaining why you'd like to become a member or you can simply talk to us right here!

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Would you like to know more about CIONET, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!