Why we exist
Most companies have bought AI by now, and found that it knows nothing about them. The models are capable. What they are missing is the company: its customers, its decisions, its numbers and the reasons behind them, which today sit in scattered systems and in people’s heads. A company brain holds that knowledge in one governed place, so people and AI tools can both use it, and the business keeps it when people move on. somai exists to build it.
The name
somai is som and ai: som for system of memory, ai for what reads it.
A system of memory is what a business knows, held in one place, so it is still there when the people who knew it move on. Most of the software a company runs is a system of record instead: the CRM remembers customers, the ledger remembers money, each in its own part of the business. A system of memory holds how those records relate, and why things were decided - the part that has always lived in people’s heads. That is what a company brain is, and what the name says.
How we work
Every engagement starts with a discovery call, then a question audit: about two hundred real questions from the business, answered in writing with what a company brain would answer well and what it would not. The audit is a small fixed fee, credited against what follows.
Then we build the brain, in bounded work measured in weeks, with senior people working alongside your team. There are two ways to have it. We hand it over and your team runs it, or we build it and run it for you, with support. Either way the client owns it, on its own servers or in its own cloud account, and can take it in-house at any time.
Everything we build is tried on our own company brain first. How we run ours sets out what the tests found, including what did not work.
The team
somai is led by two operators.
James Varga
James is a founder, operator and advisor with three decades across fintech, open banking, digital identity and AI. He spent over a decade building DirectID, the platform behind the UK’s first account-information licence under PSD2, and co-founded the industry bodies FDATA and Open Banking Excellence. His 2010 US patent for bank-account-based digital identity predates open banking as regulation. He writes on AI adoption and fintech go-to-market, and is a founding partner of the Business AI Alliance.
Why should a company own its brain?
“Every wave of infrastructure change teaches the same lesson: the companies that own the foundation keep the advantage, and the ones that rent it end up paying for it twice. What a business knows is its foundation now. It belongs on the company’s own servers, under its own rules, readable by whichever model is best this year and by whichever one replaces it.”
Matt Bilsland
Matt is a former Google director with deep experience in product strategy, delivery and commercial leadership - taking complex programmes from intent to operation and profitability within one of the most demanding execution cultures in technology. An expert in the zero-to-scale journey.
Why start with the brain, not the next tool?
“The biggest mistake I see is reaching for the next tool because the board wants to see something happen. The tools are good. What they are missing is the company: what it knows, how it decides, why things are the way they are. Build that first, and every tool you add after it starts from your business instead of from nothing.”
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