Speaking

Every organisation is under pressure to do something about AI. Almost nobody in the room can tell a genuine breakthrough from an expensive imitation.

I give audiences a working test for any AI claim, whether it comes from a vendor, a colleague or their own board, and a clear-eyed view of what the technology means for their careers and their businesses. People leave with the test in hand and a sharper sense of their own next move.

I grew up in war-torn Yugoslavia, spent years as a BASE jumper, and built and sold two AI companies. Today sovereign wealth and pension funds managing trillions call me to find out whether the AI they are being sold is real.

Enquire about a date

The work behind the talks, in the press

Cheap Tokens, Costly Chips and a Missing AI Payoff

Taking Stock, 27 August 2026

Cheap AI, costly chips: Wall Street hunts for a missing payoff

Business, 27 August 2026

AI STREET

Inside Sovereign Wealth Funds' AI Push

12 August 2026

“A study by Milos Maricic, founder of the AI advisory firm Maximand, went looking for it in a sector where the productivity story should be easy to prove.”

Jan-Patrick Barnert, Bloomberg, 27 August 2026

Keynotes

Is Your AI Real? Telling Genuine Intelligence from Expensive Theatre

Everyone is buying AI. Almost nobody can tell what they bought. Milos opens with stories of spectacular AI theatre from the investment world, then hands the audience the test he uses when the world’s largest funds ask him the same question: what exposes a hollow claim in minutes, and which questions make a vendor sweat.

The audience leaves with a three-question test they can run on any AI pitch, project or job promise the next morning.

Leadership events, conferences, all-hands

What the World’s Smartest Money Knows About AI

The world’s biggest investors are quietly testing what AI can really do with their money. Milos has scored 53 of them on exactly that, and the results surprise every audience: the leaders are not who you would guess, and the gap between what institutions buy and what they build shows where the next decade is going.

Closes with the checklist of practices that separate the leaders from the rest.

Financial conferences, investor events, boards

Smart Risk: What BASE Jumping Taught Me About Betting on AI

Milos spent years in a sport that forgives nothing, then made a living judging technology bets for the world’s largest funds. The discipline turned out to be the same. Know the system, rehearse the failure, size the bet, and never confuse confidence with evidence.

Through stories from cliff edges and boardrooms, a personal framework for taking the risks worth taking, in a career and in an AI decision.

Keynotes on performance, resilience and decision-making

The AI Questions a Board Should Ask Its Own Fund

Investment committees are asked to oversee strategies they did not build and cannot inspect. This session turns the manager due-diligence lens inward: what a board should be able to see, what reporting is designed to obscure, and where fiduciary responsibility now outruns the committee’s vocabulary.

Boards leave with the questions to put on the next agenda and a way to read the answers.

Investment committees, trustee days, closed-door sessions

Sessions on AI regulation and policy, and on AI and philanthropy, are also available. Every talk is adapted to the room, so tell me who is in it.

Formats

Keynote: 30 to 45 minutes plus questions. Tailored to the audience after a short call with the organiser.
Moderated fireside: A conversation rather than a talk. Milos supplies a question set in advance if the host wants one.
Board and committee session: A closed-door working session for trustees, investment committees and executive teams. Chatham House by default.
Workshop: A half day with an investment or leadership team, working through their own managers, vendors or AI plans.

Book a date

Enquiries come to me directly. Tell me the date, the room and the audience.

If you would rather work through a speaker bureau, say so and I will route the enquiry to the one that suits you.

For organisers

Introduction copy, ready to paste into a programme or a host’s notes.

Milos Maricic is Principal of SPEC Research in Geneva. He advises sovereign wealth funds, central banks and pension funds on how AI is changing investment management, from manager selection and due diligence to board oversight. He came to advisory work as an operator: he founded and led the Altruist League, the first AI-driven philanthropy platform, and oversaw its sale to a sovereign wealth fund. He is the creator of AIMI, the AI Maturity Index, which assesses 53 of the world’s largest sovereign wealth and pension funds on AI capability, and the author of The State of AI Alpha, a quarterly report for institutional allocators on where the edge in AI-driven investing is real. His SPEC Test, a structured method for judging whether a quantitative strategy rests on genuine economic relationships, is published by CFA Institute, and his research on what companies actually earn from AI was reported by Bloomberg. He founded Maximand, an advisory for institutions with large and growing generative-AI bills. He co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy and serves as an AI expert for the OECD and the World Economic Forum. He has ranked in the top 5% of Numerai’s global quantitative-research leaderboard, and was educated at LSE, NYU Stern and Harvard Business School.