Leading Companies to Watch 2026
Finding skilled developers who understand modern technology, work naturally with existing teams, and take genuine ownership of their work remains a challenge for many businesses. The demand for intelligent applications continues to grow, but turning an idea into dependable software takes far more than writing code. It calls for experienced people who understand the business behind the technology, communicate well, solve problems thoughtfully, and remain committed to the outcome. For companies looking to build without the cost and complexity of creating specialized teams from scratch, having the right technology partner can make all the difference.
Azumo LLC was built around that need. Founded in 2016, the company connects businesses with dedicated nearshore software development teams across Latin America, bringing experienced engineers, data scientists, cloud specialists, and technology professionals directly into client projects. Rather than operating as a freelancer marketplace or simply supplying individual resources, Azumo creates dedicated teams that work as an extension of its clients’ own organizations.
The company helps businesses design, build, and enhance intelligent applications across artificial intelligence, machine learning, data, mobile, enterprise software, cloud development, and modern software engineering. From its first customer, Twitter, Azumo has grown into a trusted technology partner serving more than 100 customers across over 20 countries, from Fortune 100 companies to startups.
Its approach combines technical expertise with close collaboration, thoughtful project management, rigorous quality practices, and strong security standards. SOC 2 certification, along with GDPR and CCPA compliance and HIPAA readiness, further reflects the care it brings to the work entrusted to it.
Inspired by the idea that “Genius is Everywhere,” Azumo continues to connect exceptional talent with businesses that need meaningful technology solutions. Recognized by CIO Bulletin as one of the “Leading Companies to Watch 2026,” the company stands out for making highly skilled software development more accessible while keeping the human element at the center of technology.
At CIO Bulletin, we were privileged to interview Chike Agbai, Founder and CEO of Azumo LLC. During our conversation, he shared valuable insights into how he and his team help organizations transform ambitious ideas into reliable, intelligent software that delivers lasting results.
Interview Highlights
What inspired the founding of Azumo LLC in 2016, and how did that original vision evolve into becoming a trusted AI-native nearshore partner?
We started Azumo in San Francisco in 2016 to help companies of all sizes build intelligent software. We could see that every business would have to adopt modern technology to compete, but most couldn't innovate affordably. There simply weren't enough highly skilled local developers. So we built Azumo around nearshore engineering talent from Latin America.
Our first customer was Twitter, where we built a chatbot for its largest advertising clients and prominent influencers. From 2016 to 2021, we solved AI problems the hard way, before there was a ChatGPT or a Claude to call. That decade is why we can move fast now. Today, we are an AI-native partner whose engineers build with AI every day and embed directly into our clients' teams.
Could you briefly walk us through your core service offerings and the technologies that enable you to deliver impactful solutions for clients across industries?
From a single engineer to entire teams, we provide expert technical advice, development, and maintenance. Our core services are AI development, custom software development, data engineering, mobile app development for iOS, Android, and cross-platform, game development in Unity and Unreal, and nearshore software staff augmentation. On the AI side, that includes AI agents, RAG, LLM fine-tuning, computer vision, chatbots, and MLOps.
We choose the models that fit each project rather than locking into one vendor, working across Claude, Codex, Qwen, Gemini, and open-weight models. Then we assemble them into the custom solutions our clients' software needs and ship them to every surface their customers use.
The name “Azumo” symbolizes transformation through skill and applied intelligence. How does that philosophy continue to influence the way you innovate and serve clients today?
Azumo draws on old Spanish dyeing traditions, where skilled hands turned raw material into something lasting. That idea still guides us. AI gives our engineers remarkable speed, but craft is what makes that speed worth having. Every change our coding assistants write goes through a code-auditing tool we built and use on our own products. It checks security, maintainability, and durability, so the software stays healthy long after launch.
From your first client, Twitter, to today’s mix of Fortune 100 companies and startups, what has remained constant in how Azumo delivers production-ready AI, data, web, and mobile solutions?
Three things haven't changed. First, we put dedicated, senior Azumo engineers on every project. They aren't freelancers, and we don't shuffle them between clients. Second, we build for production, not for demos. Third, we invest in process: a pre-kickoff technical review led by our CTO and VP of Engineering, daily standups, weekly internal reviews of every project, and a “Bench Strength” protocol that keeps a backup engineer who already knows the application ready to step in.
Over 90% of our business comes from referrals, renewals, and expansions. We have a 150% net retention rate, a 93% Net Promoter Score, a 4.9 rating on Clutch and DesignRush, and a typical customer relationship of more than three years.
As an AI-native firm that has been shipping production AI since 2016, which technologies and architectural approaches currently give Azumo’s engineers the clearest edge in speed and quality?
Our engineers code with AI assistants like Claude Code and Codex every day, so a small pod ships like a much larger team. For one client, Syntrove, we rebuilt a legacy application with Claude Code in five weeks. The original had taken years.
Architecturally, we keep the model layer separate from the application. Valkyrie, our own open-weight platform, gives clients a single REST call to any model, with flat per-seat pricing for production AI agents instead of per-token costs. We pair that speed with an automated audit of the entire codebase on day one and every day after. Findings are graded by severity, down to the file and line.
Nearshore talent from Latin America, fully aligned time zones, and a remote-first model form the core of your delivery. How do these elements combine to create a true “forward-deployed” extension of a client’s team?
A forward-deployed engineer works in the client's repositories, sits in their standups, joins their customer calls, and owns the path from idea to production. That's only possible when the team works the same hours. Many of our developers are in Argentina, just one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time, so collaboration happens in real time across the whole working day.
Being remote-first, with 100% nearshore talent, means we can draw on engineers from more than 20 countries. Because we keep a pre-vetted senior bench, a pod can start in days instead of the two to four months it usually takes to hire one AI engineer, typically at around 40% less than traditional US hiring. Client code stays in the client's repositories from day one, with clean IP assignment and SOC 2-certified security.
“Genius is Everywhere” is one of your founding principles. How does that belief influence recruiting, team composition, and the caliber of work clients ultimately receive?
Talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn't. Many gifted engineers across Latin America never get the chance to show what they can do. We built a recruiting engine to find them: multiple interview rounds, technical assessments, and reference checks. We hire for seniority and test for it before anyone joins a client team. Clients get senior people who know the modern AI stack, not juniors learning at their expense.
As a company recognized among the “Leading Companies to Watch 2026”, what do you believe makes Azumo uniquely positioned to shape the future of AI-powered software development?
Few firms can say they shipped production AI before it was a boardroom topic. Our track record includes predictive equity models for Stovell AI in 2017, a multilingual voice skill for the Discovery Channel in 2019, and semantic search across 3.5 million supplier records for Meta in 2020, built on GPT-2 and FastText. More recently, we delivered generative AI for Omnicom's cultural-intelligence platform and a computer vision pipeline inside CENTEGIX's school-safety product.
We also build AI for ourselves. Our autonomous SDR agent runs Azumo's outbound sales, and our proprietary LLM-based knowledge system tracks every project daily. With more than 300 projects delivered since 2016, that experience is our edge.
Looking toward 2026 and beyond, what is next for Azumo? Are there new services, specialized AI capabilities, or platform offerings in the pipeline that clients should be particularly excited about?
We're expanding our AI Primitives, the reusable building blocks our pods bring to every engagement. These include Valkyrie for model access, AI Code Audit for managing and securing AI-assisted codebases, RAG as a Service, our Charli voice assistant, an AI Receptionist, and our SDR agent.
We're also growing our embedded pods in high-stakes industries. Current work includes a portfolio management platform in financial services and a real-time digital twin for a multi-billion-dollar energy infrastructure network. As more companies adopt AI-assisted coding, we expect to help many of them harden and scale those codebases safely.
The Leader Behind Azumo LLC’s Success
Chike Agbai is the Founder and CEO of Azumo LLC. He founded the company in San Francisco in 2016 on the belief that companies of every size would need to build intelligent applications and that Latin America's engineering talent could help them do it. He has since grown Azumo into an AI-native, SOC 2-certified partner serving more than 100 customers, from startups to the Fortune 100, with engineers across more than 20 countries.
He leads Azumo alongside CTO Juan Pablo Lorandi, a Certified Claude Architect with more than 25 years of software architecture experience, and COO Pablo Bizzotto.
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