Tony Santiago left AWS after co-authoring the Cloud Adoption Framework for AI to build something real at CapNexus. He breaks down why only 6% of enterprises see ROI from AI — and exactly what separates them from the rest.
Most companies are building AI on a broken foundation. Tony Santiago has seen it from every angle — as an AWS insider, as the co-author of the Cloud Adoption Framework for AI, and now as the person responsible for fixing it at CapNexus Applied Intelligence.
In this episode:
• Why only 6% of organizations report meaningful AI ROI — and the two things that separate them from everyone else
• The AI Capability Flywheel: how governance, data foundations, build, and enforcement work together to actually accelerate adoption
• Shadow AI and data leakage — what your employees are already doing on their personal devices and why blocking them makes it worse
• The CIO vs. CTO tension: what happens when one leader is still designing guardrails while the other is already shipping
Tony Santiago is Managing Director at CapNexus Applied Intelligence, where he leads the AI and AWS practice for a 150-person firm serving upper mid-market and lower enterprise clients. He co-authored the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework for AI and spent six years at AWS helping global systems integrators and Fortune 500 companies stand up AI and agentic practices. He now brings that institutional knowledge directly into the organizations that need it most — the ones too big for generic advice and too small for the GSIs to care.
Connect with Tony Santiago:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyinthecloud
Website: https://capnexus.io
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