Don’t break while you build: FinovateSpring Best of Show winner Cobalt on the complex world of FI system dependencies

In this episode of the Finovate podcast, host Greg speaks with Oren Buskila, CEO and co-founder of Cobalt, a FinovateSpring 2026 Best of Show winner. Cobalt has developed enterprise architectural intelligence specifically designed for financial institutions, addressing a critical challenge in modern banking: the lack of understanding of complex system dependencies. Banks operate on enormously intricate systems comprising their own code and dozens of third-party vendor applications, yet most institutions don't fully comprehend how these systems interconnect and depend on one another. This knowledge gap leads to significant problems, including development slowness—with banks spending 70% of their IT budgets on maintenance rather than innovation—and costly production failures that can result in millions of dollars in direct and indirect costs when changes are deployed without full visibility into system dependencies. Cobalt's solution automatically maps both IT systems and business processes in real-time by scanning existing data sources including event logs, API logs, code, and database tables. The platform creates a comprehensive topology map that aligns business processes with their underlying technical infrastructure, allowing banks to see exactly which systems support which business functions and understand the full impact of any proposed changes. This "bank on a page" architecture view enables technical teams to anticipate the consequences of modifications before implementation, preventing failures and ensuring safer deployments. The platform maintains a live, continuously updated view of the system architecture by taking frequent snapshots that can be compared to detect changes and investigate issues, a capability that was previously impossible with manual architecture mapping methods. The demo at FinovateSpring resonated strongly with attendees, particularly technical leaders like CIOs and CTOs from medium and large banks who recognized the transformative potential of having complete visibility into their systems. The presentation also attracted significant interest from venture capitalists and leaders from smaller banks and credit unions, the latter group seeing opportunities to introduce agentic AI into their operations by first mapping existing business processes. Looking ahead, Cobalt positions itself as the essential architectural layer for AI-driven development in banking, as the industry moves toward having AI agents generate, maintain, and modify code at unprecedented velocities—a shift that will require the contextual understanding and change management capabilities that Cobalt provides. More info: Cobalt AI: https://www.getcobalt.ai/; https://www.linkedin.com/company/getcobalt/ Oren Buskila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oren-buskila/ Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/ Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/ FinovateSpring: https://informaconnect.com/finovatespring/ #Finovate #FinovateSpring #Banking #banks #creditunions #personalization #data #communitybanks #AI #backoffice #corebanking #digitaladoption #podcast #fintechpodcast #financialservices #innovation #digitraltransformation #fintech #finserv #modernization