Case study · Insurance
How AXA’s Cloud Business Unit took AI agents from idea to production in three months
At a glance
- working prototype agents from the hackathon, most of them built by people making an agent for the first time
- 11
- in participants confident they could build an agent from scratch, from 40% to 88%
- +48points
- viable use cases collected within a month of the hackathon
- 20+
- agents in production three months after the idea stage, with two more close behind
- 2
Overview
At the end of 2025, AXA’s Cloud Business Unit set itself an ambitious goal: to explore what generative AI could do for the business. The brief was deliberately broad. Upskill people, spark interest in AI, collect real use cases, and build the team that would turn those ideas into AI agents that add value.
We started with an agentic AI hackathon for around 100 people, followed it by collecting and scoring the ideas it produced, and then built the selected agents as modular systems with small, agile squads. Two of those agents are now in production, three months after the idea stage, and two more are close behind.
A broad brief, and a team that had not yet built with AI
The Cloud Business Unit did not start with a single use case in mind. It wanted four things at once: people who understood AI well enough to use it, genuine interest across the team, a set of real use cases worth building, and the team that would build them.
Most of the people involved had never built an AI agent. Any plan that began with picking use cases would have asked them to judge ideas they had no feel for yet, so the work had to start with hands-on experience.
Three steps, each one feeding the next
01
Agentic AI hackathon
Agentic AI hackathon →We ran a hackathon with around 100 participants, most of whom were building an AI agent for the first time. Together they produced 11 fully working prototype agents.
The share of participants who were confident they could build an agent from scratch rose from 40% to 88%, a jump of 48 percentage points. The share confident they could explain AI agents to others rose from 50% to 80%.
02
Use case collection
Use case prioritisation →After the hackathon, we went back to the AI enthusiasts it had created and asked for their ideas. Within a month we had more than 20 viable use cases, and we assessed each one with our scoring approach for genuine AI fit and business value.
Four were selected for immediate development.
03
Production agents, built the modular way
Design & build sprint →The agents are new applications, where AI adds capabilities that were not possible before. Just as important is the method behind them: modular systems built by small, agile squads, so that every new use case is easier to build and release than the one before.
“The hackathon was never the goal on its own. It gave the AXA team confidence to build. The participants that really leaned in ended up bringing us the best ideas. And because we focus so much on reusability, each new use case will be easier to release than the last. This sequence is what we set out to repeat with every client.”
From first-time builders to agents in production
Two of the four selected agents are already in production, three months after the idea stage, and the other two are close behind. The ideas came from the people the hackathon turned into AI enthusiasts, so the agents tackle problems the team knows first-hand.
“The hackathon changed how our team thinks about AI. People who had never built an agent were suddenly proposing use cases, and within months our first agents were live and real pain points experienced by our field operators surfaced and were fixed.”
Services used
Bootstrap
- People
Agentic AI hackathon
At AXA: Around 100 participants, 11 working prototype agents
See how it works →
Align
- Portfolio
Use case prioritisation
At AXA: More than 20 use cases collected and scored, four selected
See how it works →
Shape
- Portfolio
Design & build sprint
At AXA: The selected agents, built as modular systems by small squads
See how it works →
Starting from a similar place?
If your organisation is curious about AI but few of your people have built anything with it, the hackathon is where AXA began. Fill in the details and we will send you the full description of the exercise, and if it fits your goals, we can schedule a first call.
