“At Globant we define ourselves as the ‘Sherpas of business transformation'”

More than 20 years after its inception, Globant is today a company with 30,000 employees in 35 countries. The company emerged in the middle of the Argentine crisis and has become a global benchmark for digital innovation. CEO and co-founder, Martin Migoya, reviewed in an interview with Clarion The path it took, the technological leaps that characterized each stage, and the challenges posed by the emergence of artificial intelligence.

—Globant was born in the midst of a crisis and today is a global company. What has changed from that first phase?

We continue with the same energy and the feeling that the opportunity before us is endless. This speaks to the nobility of work and opportunity that we have seen for more than 20 years. At that time we were four friends and a scholar; Today we are 30,000 employees in 35 countries and work with the most relevant clients on the planet.

Throughout this time we have witnessed all the great technological changes: the birth of the Internet, the advent of… E-commercesocial networks, games, Mobile platforms and now artificial intelligence. I don’t think there has been another historical period of this scale and depth of technological transformation.

– How does Globant define today within this scenario?

-We are like the Sherpas of business transformation. Companies are facing a new reinvention of their business processes based on artificial intelligence. Given the level of complexity, they need guides to help them climb Mount Everest.

In this world there will not be one model, but rather many models applied to different problems. We help companies integrate these models into their operations. Only 5% of companies have the technical capacity to do this themselves; For the other 95%, there’s our chance.

Globant has been working with artificial intelligence for a long time. What has changed with this new wave?

—We have been investing in AI for more than ten years. And in the last five, we used it to connect projects, recruiting, and talent recruitment. Today all of this has accelerated. We actually had a similar patent for what later became Copilot. But beyond competing to see who has the best model, we’re interested in using these tools to solve real problems for our customers.

The big challenge now is to move from using AI as a personal productivity tool to redesigning entire processes focused on AI, with humans overseeing them. This is the next real transformation.

– How prepared is the industry for this paradigm shift?

-There is still a lot of confusion. Not everything has to have artificial intelligence. There are processes that still require deterministic systems, such as accounting or mathematical calculations. The important thing is to know when to use AI and when not to use it.

At Globant, for example, we have already redesigned many internal processes. We create tools that were previously impossible to imagine. We did this by learning from mistakes, testing, and getting rid of things that didn’t work. This is how true innovation is built.

—The market has punished technology stocks this year. How did this affect Globant?

– The same thing happened to us as it happened to the entire industry. Some investors thought that with the new tools there would be no need for a company like Globant, but this is not true.

The stock price responds to external variables that we do not control: interest rates, over-contracting, sector slowdowns. The important thing is what we control: how we execute, and how we prioritize delivery For our customers, how do we reshape our relationship with them?

That’s why we launched a stock buyback: we believe so much in what we’re doing that if a stock is cheap, we’d rather invest in ourselves.

—How are the company’s global operations distributed today?

— Latin America remains of great importance: about 22,000 people work in the region, especially in Argentina and Colombia. We also have 5,000 in India and the rest are distributed between Europe, Middle East and Oceania.

We have already reached all the markets we wanted to be in. The challenge now is to deepen relationships with our customers and enhance what we are building, while continuing to innovate. Because the day we stop innovating, we’ll disappear.

—What position does innovation hold within Globant today?

-Central. Innovation is part of our DNA. We recently launched Enterprise AI, a platform that connects over 140 different models and all company systems to redesign operations from the ground up. It is, in a way, the perfect playbook for applying AI.

We actually have specific cases, like YPF, where we’ve redesigned the entire procurement process. What used to take months can now be solved in hours. The savings are enormous and the impact on efficiency is immediate.

– What kind of changes does this new business model involve?

—It changes everything: how we organize ourselves, how we treat clients, and how our services are contracted.

Just as Amazon simplified hosting into a scalable service, we want to do something similar in technology consulting. With our AI Pods model, customers describe their problem, the system automatically assigns the necessary agents, and you only pay per use. It is a more transparent, flexible and scalable model.

– What challenges do you see in the future for the industry and for Globant?

The main challenge is to continue adapting to the speed of technological change. But there is also a huge opportunity: creating a new form of relationship between humans and machines, where AI frees up time and creativity.

I am a natural optimist. I believe that AI will bring out the best in humans, eliminate repetitive tasks and create new jobs. Human supervision will still be necessary.

– What place does Argentina occupy in this new phase of Globant?

—Argentina remains a major country for its talent. I welcome the current trend: fiscal discipline, structural reforms, and deregulation. This is what makes any organization, public or private, sustainable in the long term.

If we can maintain this path, the country has a tremendous opportunity to strengthen itself as a global knowledge hub. The future of Argentine talent is bright.

– What are we missing to take full advantage of this opportunity?

-Continuing the training of engineers. Argentina has good universities, but we need to make studying technology more popular. The world will be divided between those who know how to master the instrument and those who do not.

Young people must understand that technology does not replace them: it empowers them. The jobs of the future will be more interesting than ever, and it’s up to us to prepare them for it.