Menu
Apply

About

AI at CBIT

AI runs through every CBIT service, because it now runs through the work of everyone we serve. The method leads and AI empowers it. Founders build AI-native ventures. Leaders rebuild real processes with AI. Research teams design AI into their bids and their routes to impact. Governments build AI-skilled workforces. This is how CBIT already works: from the national AI and entrepreneurship programme funded by Thailand’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) and delivered by CBIT and Chiang Mai University’s Science and Technology Park (CMU STeP), to AI digital twin research for beef farming and for London’s surplus food.

Every CBIT service is AI-empowered, so the people and ventures we work with become AI-native.

AI-native, defined

What changes, in plain terms, when a person or a venture becomes AI-native: not a tools certificate, but how they work, decide and grow.

AI-native people: leaders, staff, researchers and students

An AI-native person uses AI as a normal part of their own work, and stays answerable for the result.

Work
They hand defined tasks to AI assistants and agents inside their real workflows (research, drafting, analysis, customer and operational tasks) and check the output against a standard they own.
Decide
They use AI to widen the options and test their own view before they decide, and they set the rule for when AI is not used or an agent is stopped.
Grow
They keep learning as the tools change, redesign one process at a time, and can teach others to do the same.

A plain test: give them a new task. They can say which parts AI should do, set it up, check the result and explain the decision.

What it is not: a tools certificate or a job title. It shows in the work: what the person now does with AI, and what they still decide themselves.

AI-native ventures: founders, SMEs and spinouts

An AI-native venture is built so that AI does a defined share of its work from the start, with people setting direction and checking quality.

Work
Its core processes (market research, sales and marketing, operations, reporting) run as written workflows in which AI does named steps and people check them.
Decide
It decides on evidence it can refresh quickly: AI scans the market, tests problem–solution fit and models options before money is committed.
Grow
It can enter a new market or sector without first rebuilding its cost base: AI helps it localise the offer, find partners and meet new rules.

A plain test: ask to see one core process. An AI-native venture can show the workflow, which steps AI does, who checks them and what it costs to run.

What it is not: the same as an AI company. A farm, a manufacturer or a grooming brand can be AI-native; an AI start-up can still run its back office by hand.

Track record

CBIT was founded in April 2022. Work from before then is labelled “Before CBIT”, and is never counted with CBIT’s own record.

Recognition from MHESI, Thailand

  • CBIT Professor Xiao Ma gave the special panel talk at MHESI’s launch of its national AI e-learning platform, in Bangkok on 16 December 2025.
  • CBIT In April 2026, MHESI and Nottingham Trent University signed a five-year memorandum of understanding whose cooperation focuses on AI-enabled education, venture building, global innovation ecosystem development and industrial challenge-driven research. The recognition in full.

Executives, credentials and convening

  • CBIT 600+ executives trained in AI in 2026, 500+ of them in Thailand.
  • CBIT The NTU microcredential, “Leading AI-Driven Business Transformation”: 10 credits at level 7, stackable to the PG Certificate in Leadership and Management Practice.
  • CBIT CBIT co-hosts the annual Innovate UK AI for SME Conference. Its home, ai4smes.co.uk, is hosted by CBIT and supported by Innovate UK.

AI in CBIT’s research and platforms

  • CBIT UKRI’s own record titles CBIT’s Round 1 Cross-Research Council Responsive Mode award “BeefTwin: AI powered Digital Twin for Sustainable Beef Farming”.
  • CBIT SurplusMap, an AI-enabled digital twin for London’s surplus food system, is a feasibility study funded by DICE Network+.
  • CBIT TNDRX: AI profiles a company’s capabilities, matches them to live tender opportunities, and brokers consortiums, so smaller firms can bid together for contracts none could win alone.
  • Before CBIT Hub of All Things was cited by the House of Lords Select Committee on AI (2018) and licensed to Dataswyft: 40+ jobs created, the company valued at £25m in 2020.

Professor Xiao Ma’s voice on AI

“Yesterday, AI assisted; today, AI is prioritised; tomorrow, workers in every industry will be AI natives.”

Professor Xiao Ma, Director, CBITAmbition, AMBA & BGA, Issue 3, 2026, p. 32
  • CBIT Named AI keynotes and masterclasses: MHESI’s AI platform launch, Bangkok (16 December 2025); the closing keynote of Transforming SMEs with AI (20 November 2025); an AI-empowered Business Transformation masterclass for the J-StarX UK Programme for Japanese Researchers, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (20 February 2026); “Business Process re-Design and Innovation in a Sprint with AI”, Oxford Venture Builder Workshop (7 May 2025). More keynotes and masterclasses.

Source: CBIT figures registry v1.8 (1 October 2026). Figures and sources

Every service, AI-empowered

Each service’s own page sets out what AI adds and the AI-native outcome for the buyer.

Find your way in

Four doors, one for each kind of partner. Each leads to its services and a first step.

Founders and SMEs Business leaders and companies Research and university leaders Government leaders and international partners