Wizpresso’s Founder and CEO, Calvin Cheng, participated in HSBC’s first AI panel of 2026, joining a distinguished lineup of thought leaders including Dr. Charleston Sin (Adjunct Professor at HKU, HKUST, and PolyU), Albert Lam (Chief Innovation Officer at Fano), and Professor David Wang (HKU). The panel explored emerging AI trends for 2026, focusing on enterprise adoption, governance, and the evolving role of large language models (LLMs).
During the discussion, Calvin highlighted a major shift across industries toward AI orchestration — where companies are deploying LLM-driven agents on the cloud to automate processes and enhance decision-making. He observed that enterprises are moving beyond chat-based interfaces toward integrating AI directly into core workflows and domain-specific applications, allowing business units to harness AI more effectively and responsibly.
Addressing the Governance Gap in Corporate AI
Drawing on Wizpresso’s proprietary research, Calvin presented findings from an analysis of over 2,500 listed companies’ annual reports, evaluating their AI readiness across ten governance criteria.
“A lot of companies mention AI vision in their annual reports, but not an AI governance framework,” Cheng noted.
The study uncovered an AI readiness divide — with over 70% of large-cap firms demonstrating governance frameworks, compared to only about 20% among small-cap companies. This gap underscores the growing need for robust oversight structures to ensure ethical and transparent AI adoption.
Encouragingly, the finance sector performed strongly, placing among the top three industries for AI readiness, following information technology and telecommunications. “Finance is actually not doing bad,” Cheng remarked. “We’re one of the top sectors that are quite ready for AI.”
The Future: From Conversations to Coordination
Calvin also described a critical evolution in enterprise AI usage:
“We are walking away from just asking simple questions, but better defining how different steps can work together to achieve certain things.”
This shift signals the next phase of enterprise AI — from interaction to intelligent process orchestration, where organizations design AI systems that strategically support complex, multi-step workflows.
Wizpresso will be publishing a full report on its AI governance findings in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for deeper insights into how listed companies are preparing for the next stage of responsible AI deployment.
A special thank-you to Gerald O’Connor, Scarlett Lam, and Kevin Lee from the AI Ambassador team at HSBC for organizing and facilitating such a forward-looking discussion.