In the latest episode of the AI Innovators™ Interview Series, we sat down with Alex Marroquin, Chief Growth Officer, Chief AI Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at GRYDD, a global supply chain and logistics operating system. Alex also serves as co-founder and director of the Institute for the Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (IA² LATAM), which focuses on advancing AI adoption and education across Latin America.
A veteran executive with experience spanning strategy, finance, and technology, Alex has held leadership roles at Medline Industries LATAM, Nestle, Del Monte, and other multinationals. He also serves on several advisory boards including GRYDD, Atlas (salestech), Mentium.io (fintech), and the Cambridge Business Association. His academic credentials includes multiple degrees, certifications and studies at Harvard, MIT, the University of Michigan, INCAE Business School, Tulane University and more.
Our conversation explored the rise of AI-first organizations, what it will take for AI leaders, C-Suite executives, and Boards of Directors to guide their companies through the next phase of digital transformation. Alex share his current role in applying AI innovations to scale and manage complex logistics.
From Finance to AI Leadership
Alex’s journey into AI began earlier than most. “My journey with AI probably started earlier than most,” he said. “While I was a CFO my foundational training wasn’t in finance, but robotics specifically. My specialization was in Ultramarine Theory back in the early 2000s. So for me, the concept of autonomous agents and intelligent systems weren’t necessarily a recent trend, those were foundational for me.”
He described his career as one built around bridging the technical and business worlds. “My career from Nestle to Medline to now Grid has been about being the translator,” he explained. “And my passion is decoding complexity into ROI, market share, and competitive advantage. So the spark making AI real and not science fiction is the one that actually pushed me that little bit more in order to become like this kind of profile for my next step on the career.”
Becoming an AI-First Company
When asked what it means for GRYDD to be “AI-first”, Alex shared how the company’s philosophy changed over time. “The most meaningful impact is moving our clients, for example, talking about GRYDD, from a state of vulnerability for supply chain, for example, something as important as we became aware after the pandemic, from vulnerability to control, productivity, and optionality,” he said.
He added, “We think first in how to solve a problem from the AI perspective, and then we build upon it. That’s a very different approach in how companies behave right now.”
Alex contrasted this mindset with traditional organizations. “Being AI first, for example, means that you are constantly looking into unserved solutions or unserved markets, jobs to be done, problems that you just don’t think to solve in a classical way, but in a new way. Let’s not call it AI. Let’s call it in an innovative way using ML technology.”
Why Smaller Companies Have the Edge
Alex believes that agility is becoming a major competitive advantage. “There is a lot of advantage now for small companies, for example, in order to be able to make fast decisions, specifically about investment on AI,” he said. “Their ability to do it quickly, faster time to market, develop unserved markets, for example, create new ways to solve old problems with new solutions.”
He also pointed out the contrast between small and large organizations: “The very same thing that make those companies big is the very same thing that hinders their capability in order to innovate. So right now, the world economy is becoming a world of small companies behaving fast and innovative against the big ones.”
Defining ROI in the Age of AI
When asked about the ROI of AI, Alex was direct: “ROI is our mantra. If there is no ROI, it’s science fiction. Without ROI you just have, you pretty much end up with an expensive toy.”
He warned about the illusion of progress that comes from surface-level AI adoption. “Most of our leaders that we talk in the Institute, for example, when we introduce the concept of AI, they say, yeah, I’m aware of it. I do have the ChatGPT version. I do pay for the $20 per month version of ChatGPT, and they somehow associate LLM like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, to use cases in AI and they are so different,” he explained. “Having help in order to write an email does not make you different from your competitor.”
For Alex, true ROI means measurable business results. “Having the opportunity to orchestrate a chaotic environment like global supply chain proactively, instead of being vulnerable to every single happening that has in every single route, for example, over sea or air, and take advantage of that and convert that advantage into P&L savings, a stronger balance sheet, or a better cash flow. That’s ROI.”
From Digital Twins to “Experts in the Loop”
Alex shared several real-world examples of how GRYDD uses AI to create value. “We do have in Grid this global customer with obviously global presence,” he said. “They use our platform for AI in different ways. And one of the things we use is digital twins. That is another form of AI that is not generative. It’s not machine learning. It’s digital twins.”
He continued, “Digital twins recreates your routes for 10 years, let’s say, and say, OK, this route will behave this way with these variables. And your optimal stage, if you want to go to less cost or you want to go to less time, for example, will be this because I already went into a simulated future for 10 years and this is the response you have in minutes.”
Alex also highlighted how GRYDD blends automation with human expertise. “Now we replace that. Use automation in order to replace that manual task of the people that do it. So the intellect of the people that used to do it is now dedicated to have a thing that we call dynamic supply chain optionality,” he said. “We call it no human in the loop, but expert on the loop. It’s used to have that really great insight that AI cannot have.”
The Dawn of the Autonomous Supply Chain
Looking ahead, Alex described a major shift underway. “I will say that the opportunity is monumental,” he said. “We are the dawn of the truly autonomous supply chain. So the opportunity isn’t just to make supply chain faster, it’s to make them intelligent, predictable, dynamic supply chain optionality.”
He added, “We will move from managing logistics to having agentic AI orchestrators at global scale responding to political shift, weather patterns before human analysts can actually go through it.”
Leadership and Governance in the AI Era
Alex stressed that technology is not the main challenge — leadership is. “The real challenge that I see in the future is not technological. The real challenge is about leadership and governance,” he said. “So how do boards and executive boards or C-suites adapt to govern this specific new shift in intelligence?”
He emphasized that leaders cannot delegate AI understanding to others. “If you are a leader, if you are a decision maker, you have the obligation to become not an expert, but as a business model expert,” he said. “It’s your job as CEO, it’s your job as a board member to make bold decisions on this.”
Preparing for the Future of Work
When asked if AI will replace jobs, Alex was candid. “Am I going to be replaced? That’s question number one. There’s always two answers. The political answer is, it depends. The most honest answer would be, it is quite probable that you will be replaced. But it’s also quite probable that a lot of new types of jobs will be open.”
He explained that AI is already transforming entry-level work. “Entry-level jobs were historically related to clerks. And clerks are now being replaced with, for example, AI agents,” he said. “For every 100 people, there is now one AI agent, for example, and there will be one person orchestrating that.”
Alex sees a growing need for lifelong learning. “You have to become relevant and not just relevant, but informed, curious and open to learn constantly,” he said. “These shifts are going to be with such speed that you will become obsolete with the things you learn in regular education. Micro learning, for example, now is going to be such an important thing that you need to embrace it as a part of your present professional profile.”
Watch the Full AI Innovators Interview
To hear Alex Marroquin’s full conversation on AI strategy, agility in innovation, and the evolution of autonomous supply chains, watch the complete interview below.
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