Thomas Ragger

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Founder & CEO · Vienna · hi@thomasragger.com · LinkedIn

I build empathetic AI products people can trust. I have worked for eighteen years across design, engineering and business. I co-founded wild and led it as CEO, fully remote, growing the team from four people to more than thirty with a 35x increase in revenue. Most recently my team was the sparring partner to a regulated bank on its first financial AI.

Experience

2013 - present

wild · Co-founder, CEO (Managing Director) & CTO

Vienna · fully remote
  • Grew the studio from four people to more than thirty, with a 35x increase in revenue, as a fully remote design and technology partner to global brands.
  • As Erste Bank's external sparring partner, led the team that built the earliest prototypes of Austria's first financial AI, built for the bank's eight million customers, and helped shape the path to production alongside its in-house teams. Brought memory into the assistant early, built a knowledge pipeline that legal and compliance can verify, tiered answers by branch and location, and made voice prototypes the CEO demoed live on stage; 2023 onwards.
  • Authored the Brand Context Protocol, an open, git-native standard that makes brands legible to AI models (craft.wild.as/bcp, 2026), and co-authored wild's whitepaper "AI in regulated industries" (February 2026).
  • Led the studio through its exit into Residence, the global creative collective, in 2023; retooled a craft organization to work with AI without lowering the quality bar.
  • The team's work for Red Bull, IKEA, Google, Meta, Disney, Samsung, JP Morgan Chase and Erste Bank has won 11 Cannes Lions, 21 Awwwards including Site of the Year, 20 FWA and 2 Webbys.
  • Recent AI-industry clients include Anthropic, Microsoft, IBM, Replit, Inflection AI and Serve Robotics.
2025 - present

Warm Fuzzy Story Club · Co-founder

Side venture, built with my wife

A consumer product that turns a few family photos and a short description into a printed picture book. Finalist for digital innovation at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce.

2010 - 2013

Stink Digital · Creative Technologist

London / New York

Concept and build of interactive work for global brands at a film-driven production company.

2010

HKI Hellohikimori · Senior Frontend Developer (freelance)

Paris
2008

Firstborn · Frontend Developer

New York

Talks, juries & community

2026

Return to Human · keynote, JETZT Summit, Vienna

Creative Industries in an AI World · main stage, CIMIx, Vienna

AI and creativity · AI Factory Austria, Vienna

2025

Scaling Taste · ADCE AI Creative Summit, Barcelona

Jury member, Young Lions

Led a dinner conversation at Ars Electronica, Linz

2024

Jury member, Young Lions · digital

AI m[eats] creativity? · Creative Region, Ars Electronica Center, Linz

2020 - 2021

Board member, Creativ Club Austria

Education

2008 - 2010

MA, Media & Interaction Design · FH Joanneum

2005 - 2008

BA, Information Design · FH Joanneum

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