3 key takeaways from our annual CEO Summit

Nigel Morris, QED InvestorsNov 3, 2026

THE QUARTERLY

Fall 2026

NOTE FROM NIGEL

Last month we gathered nearly 70 of our portfolio CEOs in Washington for the 19th annual QED CEO Summit, and I left the room more optimistic than I have been in some time.

There is a particular energy that comes from putting that many elite operators in one place, most of them running businesses that did not exist a decade ago and so many of them wrestling with similar problems from different angles. The hallway conversations were as valuable as anything we could ever have programmed.

We were honoured to have our friends TS Anil of Monzo and Eric Glyman of Ramp each join us for keynote firesides. TS recounted the Monzo turnaround, a business many had written off and where disciplined leadership dragged back from the brink. Eric builds faster and with more technical fluency than almost anyone in fintech. Having them with us was a pleasure for me and a real benefit to our CEOs.

Three themes shone brightest at the Summit:

Tabula rasa, the blank slate: If you were starting your business today from nothing, with no legacy infrastructure and no structure to defend, what would you actually build? We are seeing and investing in AI-native insurgents that are remaking the whole of the financial services value chain, unleashing AI at the centre of their businesses. CEOs must focus on building their business around AI, not the other way around.
Technological determinism: Organisations have been designed the same way for hundreds of years. We must evolve and centre our organisation design on AI-native pods where ideation, strategy, design, go-to-market and analysis sit together as a small, AI-supercharged, senior group. This is a massive remaking of the modern org chart, reengineering how we organise around these burgeoning capabilities.
Tokenisation:Has moved squarely into the mainstream. Stablecoins alone settled ~$33 trillion in on-chain transaction volume last year, more than Visa and Mastercard combined. The whole of global money movement is being rebuilt around faster, cheaper rails that will reshape products and margins. CEOs must be ready.

I also left the Summit with a sense of urgency. These ideas are moving fast and amount to live decisions inside our companies every day. As I wrote over the summer, I have watched four great waves reshape financial services over the past forty years: information-based strategy, the internet, digitisation and the cloud. AI will dwarf them combined.

The opportunity for builders is the greatest of my lifetime.

My best to all as we enter the 4Q.

— Nigel Morris, Managing Partner