People Moves: Avanade Appoints Ben Beath as Chief AI Officer – AI Magazine

Avanade has appointed Ben Beath as its Chief AI Officer (CAIO). Avanade is a global professional services and IT consulting company that specialises in digital innovation, cloud solutions and business transformation. 
It is built exclusively on the Microsoft ecosystem and is majority-owned by Accenture. Ben Beath, Chief AI Officer, Avanade, says: “The AI conversation continues to shift incredibly quickly and has moved past debate of whether or not to invest. 
“Today’s topic centres around how organisations can realise the full value of that investment. Key differentiation is being delivered by those that are moving past tools and rethinking how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how they serve their customers.
Multiple organisations have appointed executives to the position of CAIO, often a newly created role designed to scale AI across the company. 

As Avanade’s CAIO, Ben is responsible for helping Avanade’s mid-market and enterprise clients harness the transformative potential of AI to create measurable business impact. 
He will be partnering directly with C-suite leaders and guiding organisations in reimagining how they operate, compete and deliver value through the practical application of gen AI and ML.
Ben adds: “At Avanade, we need to lead through our own use of AI. My focus is on learning what delivers results in our business and bringing that experience to clients as they navigate their own transformation. That’s how we can help turn AI investment into measurable business value.”
Internally, he is responsible for scaling AI fluency and capability across key teams in Avanade, embedding intelligent tools and agentic systems into the way it delivers services. His focus is to drive a culture of experimentation, excellence and acceleration – positioning Avanade as the industry leader in practical AI at scale.
Discussing Ben’s appointment, Chris Howarth, CEO of Avanade, says: “Ben has spent his career helping organisations embrace new technologies and translate innovation into business outcomes. 
“His combination of entrepreneurial experience, deep understanding of AI and track record of leading transformation will be invaluable as we accelerate our own use of AI and help clients navigate this next phase of change.
“AI presents an enormous opportunity for organisations, but realising that potential requires more than technology alone. Ben will play an important role in helping Avanade and our clients adopt AI at scale, responsibly and with confidence.”

The AI conversation continues to shift incredibly quickly and has moved past debate of whether or not to invest
In 2009, Ben co-founded Loud&Clear, which he grew as Managing Director to become Australia’s largest independent digital agency before it was acquired by Avanade (an Accenture/Microsoft joint venture) in 2018, according to his website. 
He has a long history of scaling companies to acquisition level. Previously, he was the co-founder of PlayHQ, Australia’s largest community sports platform (acquired by Alpine Software Group in 2026), FanHub (acquired in 2021 by Genius Sports), and Technical Co-Founder of Sidekicker (majority acquired by Seek.com) and BoxSuite (acquired 2019 by Elmo).
He started active involvement in Web3 in 2018 and was co-founder of BattleFlyDAO in 2021, a decentralised Web3 gaming collective that launched three game modes.
He has multiple degrees from Monash University in Australia, spanning diverse fields such as business, marketing and psychology. He is also a passionate advocate for mental health and supports people struggling with conditions. 
Ben has spent his career helping organisations embrace new technologies and translate innovation into business outcomes
Microsoft: Co-founder and core technology partner. Avanade is built natively on the Microsoft ecosystem, helping organisations deploy cloud, AI and digital transformation solutions.
Accenture: Majority owner and strategic go-to-market partner. Avanade collaborates with Accenture through the Accenture Microsoft Business Group to combine industry strategy and technical delivery.
Databricks: Strategic data and AI ecosystem partner. Avanade leverages Databricks to build unified lakehouse architectures, data engineering foundations and enterprise machine learning models.
CAIO
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