Sparq CTO Derek Perry Wins 2026 AI Excellence Award

Sparq CTO Derek Perry has been named a winner in the 2026 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards, an honor presented by the Business Intelligence Group. The recognition targets individuals and organizations applying AI in ways that drive measurable, operational impact rather than theoretical potential.

The announcement came on April 21, 2026, via Sparq's official channels. Perry received an individual award in the Software category, specifically recognized for driving measurable results from putting AI into production. This distinction matters in an industry where most companies remain stuck between experimentation and actual deployment.

According to the official Sparq announcement, Perry's work focuses on closing the gap between AI experimentation and operational reality. The company's approach centers on two key offerings: Intelligence Studio, which embeds decision-ready intelligence into operational workflows, and The Shop, a working floor where solutions are stress-tested under production-like conditions before reaching clients.

"The gap between experimenting with AI and making it work in production is still where most companies get stuck," Perry said in the announcement. "Closing that gap means building systems that can handle complexities of the real world and still deliver results. That's the work we care about at Sparq, and it's an honor to see it recognized."

The 2026 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards program has been running since 2013, evaluating advances across 46 major AI application types and 36 industries. This year's winners spanned more than 15 countries, with entries evaluated by a panel of judges drawn from leading global organizations across technology, finance, and enterprise sectors.

Russ Fordyce, Chief Recognition Officer at Business Intelligence Group, noted that 2026 represents a shift toward execution and accountability. "AI has arrived! 2026 is about execution, accountability, and results," Fordyce said. "Derek stood out because his work in software reflects where the market is headed: practical AI that solves real problems, earns trust, and delivers measurable value."

The broader awards landscape reveals a clear industry trend. Business Intelligence Group's official coverage highlighted that agentic AI emerged as the dominant theme, signaling the industry has moved past prompts and pilots. Winners are now orchestrating AI systems that act, adapt, and deliver at scale.

Other notable winners included AI Clearing as Overall Winner among Innovative Products, Dr. Julia Penfield of VelocityEHS as Overall Winner among Innovative Individuals, and BostonGene as Overall Winner among Innovative Organizations. The diversity of winners underscores that AI has graduated from experiment to enterprise infrastructure.

Sparq positions itself as an AI-accelerated solution engineering partner for organizations whose growth depends on complex operational systems. The company builds intelligent operational systems spanning workflows, decision logic, data, tooling, and product behavior. Based in Atlanta with teams across the U.S. and Latin America, Sparq delivers enterprise-grade execution through senior-led engagements focused on outcomes that matter.

The physical reality of this work involves systems that must handle real constraints. Intelligence Studio embeds decision-ready intelligence directly into operational workflows, enabling organizations to move from fragmented data and delayed insights to real-time, governed actions inside the systems they already rely on. The Shop serves as a testing ground where solutions are refined under production-like conditions to understand how they perform under real constraints before reaching clients.

This kind of recognition comes at a time when AI expectations continue to rise. Success is increasingly defined by what performs in production, not what looks impressive in a demo. The award reflects a standard Sparq claims to be committed to meeting.

Whether this recognition translates to broader market adoption remains to be seen. The AI industry has seen plenty of awards and accolades that didn't move the needle on actual deployment. What matters is whether Sparq's approach can scale across the fragmented enterprise landscape where most AI projects currently stall.

For now, the award serves as validation of a specific philosophy: AI that works in production matters more than AI that works in theory. Whether that philosophy becomes the industry standard or remains a niche differentiator is the real question.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn