Dax Dasilva

Artificial intelligence played a major role in the discussion. While Dax Dasilva is enthusiastic about its potential, he cautioned organizations that expect automatic productivity gains.

“Many executives believe that simply providing AI tools to their employees will automatically lead to productivity gains. That’s not the case,” he argued.

According to him, AI first requires a reevaluation of internal processes and work methods. Companies must review their roles, responsibilities, and ways of operating before they can fully benefit from these new technologies.

Lightspeed applies this logic internally. The company already uses AI to improve certain functions related to sales, software development, and operations. It is also working to integrate digital agents into its solutions for retailers and restaurant owners.

“We envision a future where companies will have both human and digital employees. These agents will be able to perform certain administrative or analytical tasks, allowing employees to focus more on service, value creation, and customer relationships.”

Despite the scale of the changes, Dax Dasilva says employee engagement has actually increased throughout the transformation. “It is probably the achievement I am most proud of,” he said.

Every three months, Lightspeed measures employee engagement through an internal survey. While this type of indicator often tends to decline during major organizational restructurings, the company has experienced the opposite. According to Dasilva, this improvement is largely due to the emphasis placed on communication and transparency throughout the process.

He has notably held numerous open question-and-answer sessions with employees across the company’s various offices. Discussions covered everything from the share price and restructuring to artificial intelligence and the objectives of the transformation. “People were able to ask the difficult questions,” he emphasized.

According to Dax Dasilva, teams also began to see the results of the various initiatives fairly quickly. Beyond the financial gains, these projects helped foster new collaborative habits across departments and strengthened the organization’s ability to execute complex initiatives at scale.

For the entrepreneur, this level of engagement is a critical element of Lightspeed’s next phase of development as the company continues to integrate AI into its operations and products.

“The teams are approaching this next stage with much more enthusiasm. The work remains demanding, but we have become stronger collectively,” he said.

Dax Dasilva sees this period as a return to the fundamentals that enabled Lightspeed to grow in its early days. “I feel like we’re getting back to basics. We’re starting to build for the long term again,” he said.

He believes the company now has strong assets in its key markets and is convinced that the combination of greater financial discipline, a more focused strategy, and artificial intelligence will enable Lightspeed to continue growing.

“Today, we are pursuing a very specific goal: to build a company capable of generating approximately $100 million in free cash flow. That is what will fully demonstrate the quality of the business model we are developing.”

“My ambition is to build a strong, sustainable company that creates value for the next twenty years and beyond,” he concluded.