On October 1, iGP, which runs the platform and aggregation business, officially announced a change in its technical leadership. The new CTO is Cristina Turbatu, previously CTO of Casumo. Casumo is an operator, which means she moved from the side that "uses platforms" to the side that "builds platforms."
What this company does is exactly the layer that other operators build on top of — the platform solution plus the aggregation layer. So who runs the technology isn't just an ordinary personnel announcement; it's more like a signal for solution selection. The person iGP brought in has a rather interesting resume.
She has spent 14 years in technology in the iGaming industry. She started at Playtech for over five years, rising from senior developer to head of the innovation lab; then went to BeyondPlay as CTO, working on interactive software for operators; after that she became CTO at Casumo, a genuine top tech executive on the operator side. Now she's come back to run a platform.
The interesting part of this trajectory is that she's been on both sides. She's worked on the supply side and on the operator side. Someone who has carried KPIs and stepped in pitfalls on the operator side, now running a platform, understands what clients need better than someone with a purely supply-side background. When selecting a platform solution, this kind of background difference shows up in the product.
There's also the AI layer. For over a year she has been hands-on building AI products herself, one of which is "agent simulation": letting operators test a major decision on thousands of synthetic players before deciding whether to actually launch it. The description from ICE is quite specific. Right now platform providers are all placing their bets on AI, and this has become a competitive dividing line. For those selecting a solution, rather than listening to vendors boast about AI, it's better to look at what the technical lead has actually done with AI.
Of course, a single appointment announcement can only tell you so much — it doesn't give a roadmap or a timeline. But it at least reveals one thing: platform providers are starting to use "people who understand operators" to shore up their weak spots on the technical front. Next time you look at a platform solution, besides asking about the game library and gaming API integration, you might also ask whether the person running the technology has actually spent time on the operator side. If you'd like to discuss solution selection in more detail, contact us.