About

Enterprise realism meets hands-on engineering.

LLMntal was founded to close a gap most organisations recognise but few have solved: turning AI ambition into systems that actually run in production — safely, accountably, and at scale.

The story

The AI space is loud. Every week brings a new model, framework or methodology. Most of it never reaches production. What we kept seeing — in banks, in consultancies, in deep-tech — was the same pattern: strong strategy decks, ambitious proof-of-concepts, and then a quiet collapse at the boundary between experimentation and operations.

LLMntal exists to operate at that boundary. We help leadership teams design AI initiatives that survive contact with engineering, and we help engineering teams ship systems that survive contact with compliance, audit and the realities of running 24/7.

Philosophy

Strategy without engineering is theory. Roadmaps decoupled from build reality produce decks, not outcomes.

Engineering without governance is risk. Production AI in regulated environments isn't measured by demo polish — it's measured by what happens when things go wrong, who is accountable, and whether the audit holds.

Operationalising is the work. Access to models is no longer the constraint. The constraint is the operating model, the governance posture and the production discipline around them.

Credibility

LLMntal is led by Manuel Capel — 20+ years at the intersection of complex technology and business outcomes, across deep-tech startups, Big 4 consulting, global banking and multinationals.

Enterprise transformation

Built and led the AI & Analytics CoE for Western Switzerland at a Big 4 firm. 10+ clients, up to 75% operational gains. Finance close cycles cut from 25 to 8 days.

Deep-tech AI

Commercialised privacy-preserving AI across 30+ markets in financial services. Patent holder. Comfortable at the boundary between cryptography, ML and product.

Regulated industries

Private banking, telco, FMCG — IT, finance and risk. CISA certified, CFA Level I. Familiar with how governance, controls and audit actually work in practice.

Practitioner

EPFL-trained engineer. 20+ keynotes including OECD and SIBOS. Building daily with agentic AI — multi-agent pipelines, MCP servers, context and memory management.

How we work

  • Small senior teams. Work delivered by people who have shipped before — not outsourced to juniors.
  • Outcome-anchored. Engagements scoped to measurable operational results, not deliverable counts.
  • Governance from day one. Compliance, observability and auditability designed in, not retrofitted.
  • Swiss base, international reach. Headquartered in Switzerland; comfortable with confidentiality and data-residency requirements that come with the territory.

Let's talk

Whether you're scoping an AI strategy, untangling a stuck proof-of-concept, or looking for fractional CAIO support — we'd like to hear from you.

Get in touch