This is my Zipstory: Q&A with Sai

Meet Sai, an AI and Machine Learning expert, who is driving AI-adoption and a culture of innovation across our ANZ business.

Tell us who you are, what you do at Zip and a little bit more about your Zipstory

Hello, my name is Thatode Sai Surya Abishek (AKA “Sai”). I joined Zip in 2025 as a Senior AI & Machine Learning (ML) Engineer II, re-locating from India to Sydney to start the next chapter of my career. In my role, I work predominantly on AI and ML-related initiatives across, driving solutions that enable the development of really bespoke AI capabilities across the ANZ business.

What drew you to join Zip at this stage of its AI journey?

Zip has a very unique culture of Innovation that you might not normally associate with a fintech company. As I was contemplating my career options in Australia, I had the opportunity to interview with leaders in our Technology team, which inspired me about the role. Moreover, during the recruitment process I was able to learn more about the company’s appetite for AI experimentation and how our engineers are encouraged to explore innovation, which really sold me on the opportunity ahead.

Now that you’ve spent some time with the business, what’s stood out to you about the appetite and readiness for AI here?

After only a few months here, what stood out to me was the way all Zipsters were so open and eager about driving AI adoption company-wide. I have been impressed by the speed at which approvals on things like choice of tools were made, enabling our teams to access the latest and greatest tech to support day-to-day delivery.

When you think about Zip’s technology landscape, what’s the opportunity that excites you most, and where do you see AI unlocking real advantage?

For me, one of the real advantages that our AI strategy will enable is the ease by which customers will be able to use AI to transact directly with Zip. Agentic commerce is going to be a game changer for the company, especially for our customers and our merchants. It’s already evident that AI is being integrated as part of everyday life, and our innovation in this space will unlock another hugely important distribution channel to positively impact the lives of our customers in the future.

You’ve led AI adoption in roles overseas. What have you learned from those experiences that you think will shape how you approach things at Zip?

My career journey to date has been on a really fascinating trajectory. I feel as if I’ve always worked at the forefront of innovation, whether that’s been leading Cloud adoption at Fortune 100 companies, or more recently designing and scaling AI implementation at large, well known companies like Zip. This path has given me the unique perspective of what it takes to level up an organisation from ‘0-10’ and then from ‘10-100’, both in startups and larger multinationals

These experiences have taught me that the potential of technology is only really limited by the experiences, capabilities and skills of the teams implementing it. What really excites me about the future at Zip is the fact that we will need to continue to keep building and investing in a culture of constant skill development, enabled by meaningful research and development strategies. The more comfortable Zipsters in teams across the company get with AI, the quicker and smarter we’ll get at innovating for the customer.

AI transformation isn’t just about tools, it’s about people. How are you thinking about bringing Zip’s tech teams and the wider org along on that journey?

I have and always will be a massive believer in the power of learning. A big part of my mandate at Zip is driving our culture of learning and innovation across the whole organisation, for both technical and non-technical teams.

Ideating specific learning opportunities that delve into the intricacies of solutioning based on Zip’s specific engineering context will help our teams unlock much more than what they might take away from just the usual online courses. I feel this approach will better empower Zipsters to build optimal AI-enabled solutions developed from the ground up, rather than build and then be handicapped by a centralised AI team later down the track. It will also enable individuals to really ‘own’ their future potential, upskilling themselves to do meaningful work that really stands out in our ever-evolving technology landscape.