crossroads magazine Alongside his co-founders, Christophe Folschette built Talkwalker over 16 years from a Luxembourg startup into a global AI-powered software business, acquired by Hootsuite in 2024. That journey taught him some- thing now at the heart of nuwacom: powerful tech alone cannot drive AI adoption. “There needs to be a business problem,” he says. “It’s about people, processes and governance.” That, he explains, is why so many firms remain stuck in pilots. Leadership buy-in is vital; so is the right technology, internal “AI Champions” and enough ac- cess for employees to see AI at work. But for Mr Folschette, the larger shift is around knowledge, and who controls it. nuwacom connects AI to company context – meet- ings, emails, documents, customer data, workflows – with permissions and governance built in. Mr Folschette believes this kind of context is the real differentiator. “Modern AI models are interchangeable. The value is understanding who you are, what you do, who your customers are and how you work.” That changes how people use AI, and how they think about software. Instead of moving between email, doc- uments, tools and business systems, Mr Folschette en- visages one AI layer that understands the organisation and helps people create, automate and coordinate work. But the closer AI gets to company knowledge, the more important sovereignty becomes. For Mr Folschette, European sovereignty goes beyond where data is hosted. It means control across company, infrastructure, soft- ware and model, free from dependence on any single provider. Luxembourg has been central to his jour- ney. Talkwalker benefitted from research programmes, Luxinnovation support, access to ministries and interna- tional talent: conditions he says have only grown stronger. Now, rather than chase generic AI leadership, Lux- embourg should build on its strengths – such as fintech, regtech and digital infrastructure – and aim to lead in selected niches. “We need to choose where we can lead. Being small means being agile; at the same time, we need to keep on innovating.” After scaling Talkwalker from a Luxembourg startup into a global software business, Christophe Folschette is building again. With nuwacom, his focus has shifted from what AI can do, to what companies need in order to deploy it enterprise-wide: context, governance, trust and control. AI CHAMPIONS BY RICHARD CANNON © Luxinnovation/René Garcia