OpenCoreOS will launch its AI-native core banking platform in January 2026, targeting tier-one banks with a system designed to operate across multiple clouds simultaneously. The company is the brainchild of CEO Al Karim Somji, CTO Slavo Vojacek, and chief AI and product officer Ricky Marcon.
Zafin founder’s next venture
Vojacek and Marcon are both former McKinsey executives, while Somji is the same founder behind core modernisation and transformation solutions provider Zafin, which he led for 22 years up until his departure in April last year.
Speaking to FinTech Futures, Somji says his latest venture offers an “unbreakable” platform capable of handling more than 100 million accounts and 300 million transactions per day across multiple cloud environments. The start-up has been developed in partnership with two unnamed tier-one US banks.
Multi-cloud architecture tackles outage risks
Somji explains that the key differentiator with OpenCoreOS lies in the platform’s multi-cloud, active-active architecture, which he says is designed to prevent the kind of outages that have plagued major cloud providers in recent months.
“From day one we are going to architect the platform to be multi-cloud and to work in an active-active manner,” Somji tells FinTech Futures. “The failure of one cloud is not going to impact the operation of the core platform.”
At launch, OpenCoreOS will demonstrate operations across three clouds simultaneously – Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS – while Somji confirms that discussions are underway with IBM to incorporate mainframe capabilities.
OpenCoreOS pairs this trio of cloud providers with an agentic site reliability engineer system called Mars, which uses prompt and context engineering, rather than fine-tuned large language models, allowing clients to bring their own LLMs through secure gateways to ensure data remains within their environments.
“We believe we can eliminate about 95% of the resources required within a bank in operating a platform like ours,” Somji says. “From the time we start the project to the time they will go into production, it is about six months.”
Global rollout strategy
Following its go-live next year, OpenCoreOS will initially focus on the US market, followed by Australia, then the UK and Europe. The company plans to deploy small, forward-deployed engineering teams of five people to work directly with clients.
“We are deploying forward-deployed engineering teams to implement our platform,” Somji explained. “A very small team of five people that will work with the clients, and these are truly engineers, not consultants from the market.”
Other post-launch plans include a public hackathon scheduled for Q1, which Somji says will challenge participants to break the system and take down various components as a means of testing the platform’s resilience.
The company’s development has so far been privately funded by Somji and Steve Van Wyk, former group CIO at HSBC and PNC, who now serves OpenCoreOS as global chairman. Other notable leadership additions include Dharmesh Mistry, of FinTech Futures‘ Dave & Dharm Demystify Podcast, who was appointed chairman of the company’s UK entity late last month.
Dharmesh Mistry joins as UK chairman
Speaking to FinTech Futures, Mistry describes OpenCoreOS as moving “at the speed of light” in its launch preparations, attributing this pace to the team’s strength and comprehensive use of AI throughout their operations, not just within the product itself.
“I would describe them as a true AI native company, providing the first AI native core banking solution,” Mistry says. “In the race to be core banking provider of choice, I believe the timing for this is perfect. To be truly AI native and maximise full advantage, you have to start from the ground up – AI can’t be used to upgrade an existing platform.”
Mistry sees this ground-up approach as a significant challenge for existing core providers like Engine by Starling Bank, 10X Banking, and Thought Machine, while highlighting the focus of OpenCoreOS on addressing cloud banking resilience requirements mandated by DORA regulations.
As UK chairman, Mistry’s responsibilities include fiduciary and governance oversight, chairing board meetings, and providing strategic input. He describes this period as “the most exciting and transformative I have seen in 40 years of banking technology,” expressing his belief that OpenCoreOS will help accelerate banks’ journey toward an “agentic future”.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
