Digital immortality: Making human knowledge last forever

Unlocking Organizational Wisdom: Sensay’s AI-Powered Digital Immortality at Web Summit Lisbon 2025

Mr. Dan Thomson, Founder and CEO of Sensay, addressed Web Summit Lisbon 2025, highlighting a critical issue: the significant loss of organizational knowledge. In the US alone, 10,000 people retire and up to 20,000 leave their jobs daily. This exodus means decades of expertise, understanding of systems, teams, clients, and projects simply walk out the door.

This uncaptured knowledge costs Fortune 500 companies an estimated $32 billion annually. Mr. Thomson introduced “digital immortality” for businesses, a concept designed to transform how organizations manage and retain intellectual capital. It involves combining digital footprints—data points, documents, files—with employees’ tacit knowledge, their intrinsic experience and know-how.

The goal is to create a dynamic, living knowledge base accessible for future generations within the company. He noted that when an expert departs, it often takes 6 to 18 months to bring a new employee up to speed, creating a substantial void and impacting productivity and revenue. Sensay offers a solution to this challenge.

When an employee leaves or retires, they use Sensay’s system to upload their applications, files, and documents. This data is then integrated with a personalized AI biographer. This AI biographer replaces traditional exit interviews and handover documents, intelligently interviewing the departing employee to capture their processes, systems, and critical operational knowledge.

The specialized AI ensures a more thorough and relevant capture of information. Once compiled, Sensay deploys this knowledge as an active, living resource directly into the company’s existing messaging platforms, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and Telegram. This seamless integration provides immediate, 24/7 access to the organization’s accumulated wisdom.

The benefits include accelerated mentorship for new employees, significantly reducing onboarding times, and preventing the loss of critical revenue streams and established processes. Mr. Thomson emphasized that knowledge, both individual and institutional, is one of humanity’s most invaluable assets, particularly for industries like manufacturing, utilities, and telecom.

With millions of professionals expected to retire in the coming decade, taking their extensive experience with them, Sensay aims to reverse this detrimental trend. The company’s mission is to capture, preserve, and facilitate the sharing of this vital knowledge across generations, building a future where wisdom is compounded and passed on for continuous growth.