SMFG Invests in kAIgentic
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in kAIgentic, a company incorporated by Mr. Mazhari, SMBC Group’s AI Transformation Advisor, in Singapore in August 2025.
kAIgentic led by Mr. Mazhari builds the enterprise “Intelligence Layer” to accelerate AI transformation within the SMBC Group and to develop agentic AI capabilities for broader industry adoption as a long-term goal.
This announcement formalizes the closing of the investment agreement and presents kAIgentic’s name, brand identity, and mission, establishing it as the SMBC Group’s transformation engine and a platform for long‑term AI innovation spanning financial services and its customers.
SMBC Group’s AI Transformation Vision
SMBC Group aims to embed AI across every workflow and operation—combining superior quality with efficiency and delivering solutions natively integrated into our customers’ processes—to establish SMBC Group as an AI‑Leading Company. As AI performance accelerates and costs decline, a gap is widening between what technology can achieve and what large organizations can safely absorb. To close this gap, SMBC Group and kAIgentic will operationalize tacit knowledge and deploy governed, modular AI‑agent software that continuously learn and improve in live operations with the appropriate level of human supervision.
To scale this vision, SMBC Group is adopting a Dual Transformation Engine strategy: an internal transformation engine that embeds AI agents, data, and guardrails across SMBC Group’s core businesses, and an external business engine—co‑founded with kAIgentic—that launches with SMBC Group as “customer zero,” productizes those learnings, and delivers them to corporate clients. Supported by dedicated capital, governance, and world‑class AI talent, this inside‑out/outside‑in model combines the scale and trust of a global financial group with startup‑level speed, accelerating time‑to‑value while ensuring safety, compliance, and measurable outcomes.
About kAIgentic
kAIgentic is an agentic-AI company whose software platform delivers a new enterprise intelligence layer—beyond simple automation—to enable real-time reasoning, decision-making, and autonomous action. Its product focused on domain-rich knowledge work captures tacit human, process, and system knowledge; composes reliable multi-agent solutions; and runs them in production with full observability, all underpinned by enterprise-grade assurance. With a mission to design, test, and deploy agentic AI that enhances organizational agility, amplifies human expertise, and delivers meaningful outcomes at scale, kAIgentic drives continuous “Infinity Kaizen” feedback loops—raising the capacity, capability, and velocity of transformation so enterprises can evolve at the pace of technological change.
The company is helmed by Ahmed Jamil Mazhari, a seasoned transformation leader with a track record most recently as President of Microsoft Asia, in addition to leadership experience at GE and GE Capital’s spinoff Genpact.
kAIgentic benefits from two additional strengths: a solid capital base for a newly-formed entity and a Singapore headquarters that offers a practical platform for collaboration across the globe—starting in Asia, particularly Japan—within an active innovation ecosystem with established financial‑services expertise.
Norbert Gehrke
