Zup, Itaú Unibanco's technology company, announces André Palma as its new CEO. Palma left his activities as the bank's Chief Technology Officer and has fully assumed the new role since last week. Bruno Pierobon, co-founder and until then CEO of the company, becomes an advisor to Palma and also to Zup, in addition to taking a position on the Board.
In 13 years of existence, this is the first time the company has changed its top executive. The choice involved seeking a professional who brings market experience, is technically qualified, has a history of transformations, and admires Zup and its culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Among his activities at the bank, Palma dedicated his last two years at Itaú Unibanco to the adoption and operation of StackSpot, a product co-created between Zup and Itaú that makes software construction more efficient through generative artificial intelligence.
The change is part of an internal restructuring at Zup, which gives strength to the company's current strategy based on GenAI and ensures the expansion of StackSpot, consolidating its position as a product company offering Professional Services/Consulting.
“Our mission at Zup will always be to create innovative solutions and products that transform the way people and companies interact with technology. With this new challenge, I am committed to excellence in delivering results that not only meet the needs of our customers, but also anticipate the construction of the future. And I will do this by maintaining the DNA of Zup, a company with entrepreneurial energy, competitive in the market, that cares for people and inspires as a tech leader,” says Palma.
In over 20 years of experience at Itaú Unibanco, André Palma has accumulated experience as superintendent of infrastructure engineering, systems, architecture, governance and operations in Technology, in addition to having acted strategically in the journey of modernizing the bank's platforms, cloud and AIOPs.
Palma explains that he takes on the leadership with the aim of continuing Zup's trajectory, with a focus on the customer and the brand's growth in the national technology market, seeking to lead innovation and excellence in GenAI.
“Zup is an AI-First company. Over the past year, we have seen a global window of opportunity for GenAI and we want to take advantage of it to be the main partner for our customers and future customers in the use of this technology. The constant search for delivery with ever greater excellence explains, for example, our recent affiliation with MIT, working in a mutual collaboration with the GenAI core that provides access to laboratories, professors and researchers who are dedicated to the subject. On the business front, in 2024, we increased our investment in AI by almost 80%, challenging us to go beyond code assistance and platform engineering. Our desire is to become a reference in the market by creating AI agents that act throughout the development cycle, hyper-contextualized with the needs of each challenge and ready to generate efficiency throughout the entire journey.”
