Cleverbridge

Happy to join the Munich edition of Gradient Descending - a roundtable series with a well-earned reputation for deep technical AI conversations among builders. Previous sessions featured OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Scale AI, so the bar for a practical, no-hype discussion is high. The title says it all: "Plugging an LLM into your database is the easy part." That's exactly where many enterprise AI initiatives stand right now. The prototype works, the demo lands - and then reality starts asking harder questions. Is the answer actually correct? Who is allowed to see what? And will quality still hold three months from now, after models update and schemas drift? Looking forward to discussing this with Dr. Fabian Gampfer from Snowflake, and thanks Anna Andersson, Akash Bajwa and Earlybird Venture Capital for organizing. If you're building agentic systems on real data - and dealing with what breaks next - join us: https://luma.com/d5pwzbnu

AI is changing how software gets discovered, evaluated, and now, purchased. For software companies, the core challenge is making agent-led transactions safe and trusted, with the right controls and visibility in place. That’s why we’re teaming up with Visa to bring secure agentic commerce closer to reality. Using Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory, we're establishing how AI agents can be recognized, authenticated, and managed as they interact with the Cleverbridge platform. This milestone helps prepare Cleverbridge clients for a future where digital buying is increasingly agent-driven, giving them a practical path to participate in agentic commerce securely, confidently, and at scale. Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gSZywGu9 #AgenticCommerce #DigitalCommerce #SoftwareCommerce

Excited to partner with CFO Dive and Cleverbridge on a topic I think deserves more attention in finance. We spend a lot of time talking about growth, but some of the biggest opportunities to improve profitability happen after the sale. Small inefficiencies across renewals, payments, invoicing, tax, and support can quietly add up over time. I enjoyed sharing my perspective on where finance teams can uncover hidden costs and improve operational efficiency. Would love to hear how others are thinking about this. #FinanceLeadership #RevenueOperations #FPandA #SaaS #DigitalTransformation

The top line may tell one story, but when you look deeper.... revenue is leaking across the lifecycle.     Renewals, add-ons, payment updates, invoices, tax requirements, support requests, reporting, and reconciliation all shape how efficiently revenue turns into cash.    Individually, these issues may look small. Collectively, they can create margin pressure, forecasting noise, and operational drag that healthy growth metrics don’t always reveal.    That’s the focus of our latest piece in partnership with CFO Dive: why software and SaaS companies need to look closer at the post-sale transaction layer.    Gabrielle Meyer explores how CFOs can spot hidden cost-to-serve — and why operational efficiency after the sale is becoming a bigger part of profitable growth.    Read the full story on CFO Dive: https://lnkd.in/gEcyzeyr

AV is becoming more connected.    InfoComm made that fact hard to miss. The conversation has moved from standalone devices to connected systems, AI-enabled tools, and open ecosystems designed to simplify management for IT teams.    That shift changes how products are built. It also changes how they’re bought.    In our Vision Stage session with Shure, the most valuable takeaway was simple: when historically hardware-based companies bring software to market, the buying path has to fit the way customers and partners already operate.    Some buyers want a direct digital purchase.  Some need a trusted partner involved.    A strong business has to support both of those motions without adding new friction.    Big thanks to Susy Liem (and the entire Shure team) for sharing the stage with Cleverbridge’s Ben Meyer, and to everyone who attended the session and connected with our team throughout the week.    We left #InfoComm energized by where the AV industry is headed, and excited to keep helping companies across the space build the commerce foundation their software future requires.

Care travels across borders.     This month, Cleverbridge teams in Germany and the US spent time supporting two organizations doing deeply important work for their communities.     In Cologne, Cleverbridge colleagues spent two days volunteering with Tafel Deutschland e.V., a local food bank that provides donated groceries to people in need. The team supported the day-to-day work behind food distribution, from organizing donations to helping prepare essentials for pickup.      In Chicago, Cleverbridge teammates volunteered at Ronald McDonald House, which has provided families of hospitalized children a place to stay for over 60 years. The team helped Chef Chris prepare and serve lunch, supporting the everyday hospitality that makes the house feel welcoming for guests.     Different communities. Different needs. Same lesson.     Across Germany and the US, we saw how local organizations turn care into support systems, and how a few hours of help can fit into something much bigger.     Thank you to Tafel, Ronald McDonald House, Chef Chris, and every Cleverbridge teammate who gave their time and energy.

AI has quickly become one of the most difficult investment categories for CFOs to evaluate. The pressure to move is real. While many teams are still experimenting, boards are asking for roadmaps. And given the nature of AI, most businesses demand speed in execution. As finance leaders, we are left with a familiar question: where will the investment create the most measurable impact? For software and SaaS companies, I believe some of the clearest opportunities sit inside revenue workflows we focus on at Cleverbridge — how customers buy, renew, expand, and receive support. These are not always the most glamorous AI use cases. But they are often the most measurable. When a company digitizes a manual renewal process or cleans up transaction data, the business case gets easier to evaluate. There is a baseline, a clear operating change, and a result the business can track. AI can create meaningful value. But CFOs do not have to fund AI on faith. I wrote more about this for CFO Dive:  https://lnkd.in/enbFJdvn

You’ve heard Shure before.     From concert stages to broadcast feeds, podcasts to conference rooms, Shure has helped power audio experiences for over 100 years.     Increasingly, software is becoming a bigger part of how those experiences are delivered, managed, and brought to market.    For a historically hardware-driven company like Shure, that posed the question: how do you bring software into a global AV business without disrupting the direct and partner-led motions already helping customers buy?    That’s where Cleverbridge came in.    Our journey with Shure over the past four years shows why the right commerce partner has to do more than just process transactions or connect disparate systems. We had to understand Shure’s current business, its partner ecosystem, and where its software needs were headed next.    At InfoComm 2026, we’ll go deeper into that story.    Cleverbridge’s Ben Meyer will join Shure’s Susy Liem for “How Shure Is Building a Global Software Business with Cleverbridge” on June 18th, part of the larger “Vision Stage Showdown: Powering the Future Workplace.”    If you’ll be at InfoComm, come find us at the session, or send Ben a direct message to connect.

AI investment is moving fast.     For CFOs, the challenge is separating promising experiments from operational wins.    In his new piece for CFO Dive, our CFO Markus Scheuermann explores how software and SaaS companies can find some of the clearest use cases inside revenue workflows — where better systems, cleaner data, and more automation can make impact easier to track.     Read the full story here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eB63MKs5