.png)
Belgium 15-09-2026 Squad Only Virtual english
AI pilots are easier to launch than to embed into daily operations. The challenge is changing how work happens once AI becomes part of decisions, tasks, handovers, and controls. Three pressure points tend to decide whether adoption holds. - Workflow fit matters: AI has to enter the flow of work as part of the process. - Ownership needs to be clear: someone must own the process, the controls, the exceptions, and the outcome. - User trust has to be built: people need to know when to rely on AI, when to challenge it, and when to escalate. The working question is simple: how do we move AI from promising pilots into daily work while keeping clarity, accountability, and risk control? If this is part of your current reality, let’s compare choices, constraints, and lessons learned.
Read More
Belgium 17-09-2026 Country Members Physical french
Pendant longtemps, le TCO donnait une impression de contrôle. On investissait, on amortissait, on optimisait. Les coûts étaient visibles, relativement prévisibles, et structurés autour d’une logique claire entre CAPEX et OPEX. Ce modèle ne suffit plus à expliquer où va réellement l’argent. Aujourd’hui, une part croissante des dépenses IT ne repose plus sur ce que l’on possède, mais sur ce que l’on consomme: des tokens générés par l’IA des agents qui exécutent des actions en continu des outils SaaS qui se multiplient dans les équipes du cloud qui s’adapte en permanence à l’usage Le coût ne disparaît pas, mais il devient plus diffus, plus dynamique, et souvent plus difficile à attribuer, à expliquer, et à maîtriser. C’est là que des approches comme le Technology Business Management, ou TBM, redeviennent particulièrement utiles: non pas comme un exercice de reporting supplémentaire, mais comme un moyen de relier concrètement les dépenses aux services, aux usages, et aux décisions. Et c’est là aussi que la question du “Saint Graal” revient, mais sous une autre forme. Vous vous demandez peut-être: Comment garder de la maîtrise quand la dépense dépend du comportement, des usages, et parfois même de systèmes autonomes ? Comment piloter l’équilibre CAPEX/OPEX quand le cloud, le SaaS et l’IA déplacent progressivement les coûts vers des modèles variables ? Quels coûts restent encore trop souvent hors radar: ressources métier, formation, support, intégration, sécurité, gouvernance ? Et surtout, qu’est-ce qu’un “bon TCO” veut encore dire quand il faut le mettre en regard d’objectifs parfois plus stratégiques, plus longs à mesurer, ou plus difficiles à quantifier: qualité de service, résilience, agilité, expérience utilisateur, capacité d’innovation ? Ce sont précisément ces questions qui seront au cœur de notre rencontre: une discussion ouverte entre pairs, ancrée dans la réalité du terrain, pas pour débattre de modèles idéaux, mais pour comprendre comment chacun tente, concrètement, de mesurer, d’attribuer et de reprendre le contrôle, sans réduire la valeur d’un choix technologique à son seul coût.
Read More
Belgium 25-09-2026 Squad Only Physical english
Transformation has become constant. The challenge is managing the amount of change teams are expected to absorb while they continue to deliver existing work. Three pressure points show up quickly. - Capacity becomes stretched when teams face new tools, processes, AI practices, security requirements, and operating model changes at the same time. - Prioritisation becomes critical when many initiatives compete for attention. - Managerial discipline becomes essential because leaders need to decide what to stop, simplify, delay, or protect. The working question is simple: how do we keep transformation moving while giving teams enough focus and capacity to execute it properly? If your teams are absorbing constant change, let’s compare how others are managing capacity, sequencing, and focus.
Read More
CIONET Trailblazer: CISO: The Shift from Prevention to Resilience: Turning Visibility into Execution
Published on: January 28, 2026 @ 9:48 AM
CIONET Trailblazer: AI Transformation: Bridging the Cultural Divide to Achieve Competitive Advantage
Published on: December 17, 2025 @ 9:16 AM
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
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
622 Views 0 Likes Read More
CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.
Read More
The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.
Read More
Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !
Read More
CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.
Read More
Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!
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!