Across all levels of our company, including our portfolio and parent company, we are seeing support and encouragement for AI adoption and business transformation
Within Volaris Group, bootcamp-style accelerator events have become a catalyst for AI adoption for many businesses. Several of our portfolios have gone one step further by holding their own events that build upon previously offered learning programs.
By creating complementary programming, they are able to customize learning to their needs. Our decentralized, bottom-up approach to AI adoption encourages our employees to use their industry domain knowledge and combine it with the latest AI functionality, ultimately creating solutions that will be most useful to their customers and strengthening their own product offering.
Importantly, we are seeing skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm for adoption spreading across the entire organization, transforming each business one team member at a time. As we help our organizations learn, we become a more resilient company and develop best practices that we can share among our network.Themes observed at recent AI accelerator events:
- People are going into events with a higher level of baseline knowledge about AI than we have seen in the past.
- AI adoption is going beyond the R&D team and enhancing other business functions, such as HR, customer care, and professional services.
- Our organization’s AI leadership is supported and strengthened by AI leads and specialists or who help our businesses advance their knowledge.
- Partnerships with external AI experts, such as AWS, Microsoft, and Mosaic, and internal partners including raia help our businesses stay attuned to the most current AI developments.
- Our learning programs are leaving a lasting impact by helping our employees develop coaching ability and 90-day plans for using AI to enhance their work.
2026 has been a very busy year for Volaris businesses with respect to AI adoption and learning. This round-up covers what happened in July, August, September, and October 2026, and looks ahead at what is coming next.
Europe-focused Ulsted portfolio holds AI accelerator in London
As of fall 2026, all businesses in the portfolio led by Jesper Ulsted have participated in an AI accelerator, according to Janni Zesach, the portfolio’s Chief Growth Officer. The portfolio held an AI Accelerator from September 28 to October 2, 2026, and the agenda included research about AI disruption in the product track, a session about the Business Transformation team’s domain intelligence layer, and live customer interviews. Teams adjusted based on customer feedback before presenting their builds on demo day.
Among the results that businesses showcased during the event:
- SDM Housing showed a customer a mould detection and inspector route planning workflow during the event. The customer expressed interest in whether it could be ready by April 2027. The workflow was live on UK roads the next morning.
- AskCody redesigned their full platform to be AI-first in four days. A customer estimated that the changes saved them ten hours. The product was launched to production by the end of the event.
- 11 alumni of the portfolio’s previous accelerators returned as coaches.
- One team from a newly acquired company built an agentic CRM add-on to their wealth management platform.
Growth Accelerator combines Volaris best practices with AI thinking
Led by AI Transformation Officer Trey Drake, the portfolio led by Rob Turner organized a Growth Accelerator in Austin, Texas. The group hosted five portfolios from across Volaris Group between September 28 to October 2, 2026. The event combined existing best practices at Volaris Group with the latest emerging AI practices for software businesses.
(Photo credits: Lauren Dilbeck, Usmaan Razaq)
Teams from various businesses had the chance to step away from day-to-day operations and turn their ideas into a tangible product. Before arriving, participants were asked to complete at least two customer or prospect visits. Before the event, teams were equipped with resources including a customer observation playbook and field toolkit.
[The portfolio Growth Accelerator] has given us renewed energy around how we continue to evolve Gold-Vision—delivering a great service to our customers while developing value-add products that deepen those relationships and give customers even more reasons to stay and grow with us.
-Usmaan Razag, Client Services Director, Gold-Vision
Faith Kubicki, Director of Marketing at InTempo walked out of the event with the company’s first-ever “real data, real savings” marketing campaign. Her team wrote a script that pulled real-world customer data out of their core product to show how customers could collect revenue and save time using the tool. “This campaign, including email copy and supporting collateral, is already lined up and ready for us to pull the trigger once final product wrap-up is complete,” she shared.
Human by Design AI Accelerators focus on customer relationships
Businesses from portfolios led by Rick Bacchus and Rob Turner joined an AI accelerator in Toronto between October 13 and 16, 2026. The theme of the event was “Human by Design” and celebrated the role that professional services and customer care teams play in earning, maintaining, and growing customer trust.
Businesses partnered with two vendors, raia (a Constellation Software business) and Mosaic to integrate AI and automation in professional services and customer care.
Portfolio Leader Rick Bacchus delivered a keynote speech about how customer-facing departments can strengthen their true competitive advantages—customer trust, knowledge of customer needs, and deep industry relationships—by using AI to help them focus on high-value activities. The event sought to build on past programming, where the focus was on R&D and product departments.
(Photo credit: raia)
“Customer care is the next logical place to accelerate efforts,” said Pat Mahapatra, Director of M&A.
“Customer care people form the nucleus of our businesses. They know the customer, product, workflows, and product issues. What they’ve done over the course of two days is take their knowledge and put it into a database that AI can read. Now anybody in the organization can benefit from that.”
-Pat Mahapatra, Director of M&A, Volaris Group
Attendees left with a 90-day action plan and a roadmap for implementing AI solutions that are purpose-built with customers in mind.
The event was followed by a similar event in Berlin on the week of October 19, 2026, which explored business uses of AI in the HR function.
AI Champion network among activities launched in portfolio led by Carl Bruce
In September 2026, the portfolio led by Carl Bruce launched an AI Champion network. Organized by the portfolio’s Head of AI, Gavin Stuart, the network brings together 31 champions nominated from around the portfolio.
The network enables two-way sharing. The Volaris Business Transformation team uses it to share playbooks, templates, and reference architectures across the portfolio. Meanwhile, AI champions detail what they learn inside their own businesses and provide insights into how each business is using AI. This network helps identify the initiatives with the strongest revenue potential, which could benefit from further support.
The portfolio also held a GM Summit where leaders worked through a guided workflow to examine their business strategy through an AI lens and produce a one-page strategy reset.
The longer-term outcome is a reusable skill using an AI tool that acts as an AI strategy consultant, allowing leaders to revisit and update their strategy regularly as AI capabilities and competitive conditions evolve.
-Gavin Stuart, Portfolio Head of AI, Volaris Group
The portfolio has other AI activities planned, including an AI Accelerator in South Africa in November, and a mini-AI accelerator for a newly acquired company so that the business can start building AI capabilities within its first few months of joining.
Constellation Software appoints Chief AI Officer
Volaris Group’s parent company, Constellation Software, appointed Daan Dijkhuizen as Chief AI Officer in October 2026. Constellation Software has also been supporting AI learning across Volaris and other operating groups by hosting several AI learning sessions and masterclasses since November 2025. Most recently, two sessions in October 2026 covered these topics:
- The path to level 3 AI maturity, featuring speakers from Volaris Group-owned maritime software company Helm Operations
- The latest in AI trends and agents, with an emphasis on turning AI and customer insight into growth for acquired companies, presented by Daniel A. Chen, VP of Venture Investments and AI at Constellation Software
- VMS Ventures, the venture capital office at Constellation Software that can fund ambitious entrepreneurial ideals from our businesses, led by Karl Schabas, General Partner at Constellation VMS Ventures
- Examples of how AI is being used to solve underserved problems, presented by Constellation Software Chief AI Officer Daan Dijkhuizen
As we approach the end of 2026, we look forward to bringing more AI learning activities to further support our businesses in serving their customers.
