Yesterwork will kill you, AI agents will save you  

As a company born in Belgium but built to scale, TechWolf is on a mission to help the world’s leading organisations build AI-first workforces. Together with Wintercircus, we created AI Day 2025 to bring leaders, builders, and innovators together—right at the heart of Europe’s fastest growing AI ecosystem. The result: a day of real insights, bold discussions, and an unfiltered look at how AI is reshaping work and business.

TL;DR

TechWolf AI Day 2025 made one thing clear: we’re not talking about the future of AI anymore. It’s here, it’s in production, and it’s changing everything—from how we work to how we trust what we see.

Key takeaways:

• “Yesterwork” is the silent killer of organisations. Companies stuck in old ways won’t survive.
• AI is blowing up the traditional tech stack—hardware and software are reinventing themselves in real time.
• Deepfakes and synthetic media require critical thinking and digital resilience is more important than ever.
• AI agents are delivering real business outcomes today—but only when built with trust and human oversight.
• The AI-first organisation is not a theory anymore—lean teams are scaling faster than ever by embracing it.

If you’re not acting on this yet—you’re already falling behind.

“Yesterwork is the silent killer of organisations”

Peter Hinssen, nexxworks Co-Founder, kicked off the evening with a loud & clear message / wake--up call:

“Yesterwork is the silent killer of organisations. AI is moving at a pace that breaks deterministic logic. The question is: can your organisation keep up?”

He painted a picture of an AI-driven future where the old tech stack no longer fits. Hardware is being reinvented to power AI, and the gap between AI innovation and its real-world diffusion is causing tension—social, political, and organisational.

“You can’t lead tomorrow with yesterday’s playbook.”

Peter left the audience with urgency: embrace adaptability, or risk irrelevance.

‘Anything can be faked—Even the truth’

Guillaume Bouchard (co-founder and CEO Checkstep)  brought the risks of this AI wave front and centre. Deepfake scams aren’t theoretical—they’re here, and they’re costly.

“A $25M heist was pulled off with a fake CFO video call. It’s not about if this will hit your industry—it’s when.”

He explained that trust itself is now at risk. In a world where anything can be faked, even real footage can be dismissed. His call to arms:

“Digital literacy and critical thinking—those are your best defences. We need AI guardians, but we also need smarter humans.”

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The first autonomous business: An army of AI agents

Amos Bar Joseph (Co-founder and CEO, Swan AI) offered proof that the AI-first business is no longer just a concept—it’s a new frontier being built right now.

“With 3 founders and an army of AI agents, we are on a mission to prove that you can scale an autonomous business.”

Swan AI’s goal: to show that a company run by a small human team plus AI agents can achieve results traditionally requiring much larger organisations. They are well on their way to demonstrating this model in practice. Amos stressed that success doesn’t come from chasing a single magic agent. Instead, it’s about building an ecosystem where agents and humans orchestrate together:

“It’s about orchestration, not automation. That’s where the real value is.”

Their vision: the first autonomous business, powered by a coordinated army of agents delivering outcomes across the organisation.

“AI Agents: Trust beats magic”

Emma Burrows (Co-founder, Portia AI) pulled the curtain back on the real state of AI agents—and delivered one of the most grounded insights of the evening. Too many organisations fall into what she called the risk vs reward trap:

“There’s too much AI-for-AI’s-sake thinking. Board-driven mandates often result in low-risk use cases that don’t scale, under-investment in reliability, and ultimately agents that never get fully deployed.”

Many AI projects start with good intentions—leadership mandates an AI strategy, and teams pick "safe" use cases to minimise risk. But by avoiding more ambitious applications, these projects often:

• Don’t justify serious investment in reliability and infrastructure.
• Fail to deliver meaningful value.
• Lead to agents that never scale beyond prototypes.

Emma highlighted that businesses often assume agents will be adopted like ChatGPT—everywhere, instantly—without the necessary backend to support such scale. This mindset sets them up for failure.

She also reminded the audience why you should build agents differently:

“Flashy demos are great. But if your agents aren’t reliable, your users won’t adopt them. Predictability beats magic.”

And to prove it—Emma closed with an impressive live demo of Portia’s agents in production, showing that it is possible to deploy agents that users can trust and control.

“The 100x worker is here”

Jeroen Van Hautte (Co-founder & CTO, TechWolf) closed the day with a bold message: HR must lead the AI revolution—and companies need a clear roadmap to survive and thrive in this new era.

“Don’t use AI to replace people. Use it to make skills work at scale.”

He championed the rise of the 100x worker—individuals who harness AI to multiply their impact. AI-first companies are already changing how they hire, organise, and deliver.

“The org chart will break. Skills, not roles, will define success. Companies that adapt fast will win.”

“One more thing”: Publishing over patenting and open-source momentum

TechWolf also used AI Day 2025 to share an exciting update on its own AI leadership.

“If you want to shape the future of AI-first work, you need to contribute to the state of the art,” said Jeroen Van Hautte.

TechWolf announced the upcoming release of its new open sourced Skill-CM model—delivering 10,000x efficiency gains on skill extraction and matching.

The impact is already visible: downloads of TechWolf’s open-source models have skyrocketed in recent months. It’s clear: TechWolf is not just helping customers adapt to AI-first work—it’s helping define what that future will look like.

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Final Takeaway

AI Day 2025’s message was loud and clear: AI-first transformation is already reshaping the game. Yesterday’s ways of working won’t cut it. The winners will be the organisations willing to rethink, rebuild, and embrace this new reality.

If you’re ready to move beyond talk and start building—explore TechWolf case studies or book a demo to see how leading companies are already doing it.

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