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Karl Lillrud
Boards have signed off on AI ambitions that the operating business has no idea how to execute. Pilots multiply, vendor decks pile up, and the gap between strategy slides and what customers actually experience keeps widening. The job leaders need help with is choosing where AI changes the commercial model, and where it is noise.
Karl Lillrud is an entrepreneur and AI advisor who helps boards and executive teams turn artificial intelligence from a strategy slide into a working part of the commercial model.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Karl Lillrud
- He is inside the problem he speaks about. He is a keynote speaker for and advisor to Volvo Cars on data, analytics, and AI, work that runs across AI readiness, governance, business cases, and production readiness.
- His work connects AI directly to revenue mechanics: pricing, conversion, retention, and customer acquisition, the parts of the P&L the C-suite is actually accountable for.
- Nine published books, including “You, Me and AI” and “AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct”, give leadership teams a shared language for the second-order effects of AI on work, governance, and customer trust, beyond the productivity headlines.
- He sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and Thinkers360 placed him in its 2026 Top 50 on artificial intelligence, digital twins, and AR/VR.
- The same pairing of keynotes and advisory work runs through Spotify, SEB, Klarna, and H&M, including subscriber growth and pricing at Spotify and fixed income and commodities at SEB.
Biography highlights
- Keynote speaker for and advisor to Volvo Cars on data, analytics, and AI.
- Keynote speaker for and advisor to Spotify, SEB, Klarna, and H&M, and worked with Swedbank to June 2026 on its financial crime and sanctions screening platforms.
- Founder of Pricelizer, a Swedish e-commerce startup named to CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015, and of PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform.
- Author of nine books, including “You, Me and AI” and “AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct”.
- Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council since August 2024, and a two-time TEDx speaker.
- Ranked 16th in Global Gurus’ 2026 Top 30 Motivational Speakers list, and listed by Thinkers360 in its 2026 Top 50 on artificial intelligence (48), digital twins (8), and AR/VR (18).
Biography
Volvo Cars brings Karl Lillrud in on two fronts, as a keynote speaker and as an advisor on data, analytics, and AI. The advisory brief runs across AI readiness, portfolio governance, business cases, and production readiness. Those are the decisions that settle whether an approved AI strategy survives contact with an operating business. He has done versions of the same work at Spotify, on subscriber growth and pricing, at SEB in fixed income, and at Swedbank on financial crime and sanctions platforms.
He has been building digital businesses since the late nineties. Pricelizer, which he founded in 2013 to attack the abandoned-cart problem he kept hitting as an operator, landed on CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. He also founded PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform.
His books reflect the same instinct. “You, Me and AI” treats the technology across 54 chapters covering work, creativity, education, governance, and the human-machine boundary, rather than as a productivity story. “AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct” focuses on how leaders and their teams should actually integrate the tools day to day. The two sit inside a catalogue of nine published books, written for people who have to make decisions.
Global Gurus ranked him 16th in its 2026 Top 30 Motivational Speakers list. Thinkers360 placed him in its 2026 Top 50 on artificial intelligence, digital twins, and AR/VR. He joined the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council in August 2024.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and the C-suite agenda
- AI in retail and consumer experience
- Digital commerce and customer acquisition
- Innovation and business model reinvention
- Leadership in technology-driven organisations
- AI ethics and governance
- Future of work in the AI era
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy approval to execution.
- CEOs, CMOs, and chief digital or commerce officers in retail, telecoms, and consumer brands.
- Innovation, transformation, and AI leads inside large enterprises building the operating model for AI.
- Founder and growth-stage leadership teams using AI as a commercial wedge.
Audience outcomes
- A sharper read on which AI use cases move commercial metrics and which are theatre.
- A vocabulary for discussing AI’s second-order effects on customers, employees, and brand trust at board level.
- Concrete reference points from operators who have shipped AI inside consumer-facing businesses.
- A clearer view of where leadership attention should sit next versus where it can wait.
- Confidence to challenge vendor narratives and refocus internal AI portfolios on revenue impact.
Talks
How large organisations move from scattered AI experiments to AI running inside everyday operations.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI creates value first, and where it quietly drains budget.
- The decision rights and governance that let AI scale safely.
- A 90-day plan leaders can start on Monday.
What leaders should hand to AI, and what they need to keep for themselves as work changes.
Key takeaways:
- A test for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what stays human.
- How to protect judgement and trust while adoption is under way.
- Leadership habits that make AI stick without burning people out.
How decision makers use AI as memory, analyst, and sparring partner, and what that does to the quality of their thinking.
Key takeaways:
- Workflows that save hours in a working week.
- How to keep human judgement in charge of what AI produces.
- A personal setup attendees can build the same day.
How AI assistants and agents are changing the way customers discover, compare, and buy, and what brands have to do about it.
Key takeaways:
- The shift from search to AI-assisted buying, and what it means for marketing.
- How to stay visible and trusted when an AI is recommending on the customer’s behalf.
- Three moves to start this quarter.