The Rising Sun & Pad Thai Cuisine on High Street in Thame was visited by South Oxfordshire enviromental health officers earlier this year.

One key problem on the day was the management of food safety, which was deemed to require “major improvement”.

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One category noted as being “generally satisfactory”, however, was the cleanliness and condition of both the facilities and building.

Meanwhile hygienic food handling was deemed as “improvement necessary”.

The website invites customers to enjoy the delights of a traditional British pub – oak beams, stone floors, great beers – and the flavours of fantastic Thai cuisine.

They also participated in this years Thame Pride with open mic nights and professional singers coming on later in the night to perform for punters.

Altimetrik has joined the World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence, placing the company among organisations contributing to the Forum’s work on responsible artificial intelligence.

It will bring its work in AI engineering, data and platform systems to the Centre, where members contribute to governance, industry adoption and the use of AI across large organisations. Altimetrik’s involvement centres on ALTi AIOS, its AI engineering operating system, designed for large businesses with established legacy systems.

The Centre for AI Excellence is one of the World Economic Forum’s hubs for AI governance and adoption. Its programmes focus on encouraging innovation, preparing industries and societies for broader AI use, and promoting what it describes as trustworthy technology through governance frameworks.

For Altimetrik, the membership adds an international policy and standards dimension to a business focused on deploying AI inside complex corporate environments. More than 10,000 engineering practitioners are working on AI in production across sectors including banking, financial services and insurance, manufacturing, retail, automotive, healthcare and life sciences.

The announcement also reflects a wider shift in the AI market, as attention moves from experimental pilots to the challenge of integrating AI into older technology estates. Many large companies are trying to apply new AI systems without replacing decades of accumulated software, data infrastructure and operational processes.

That issue is central to Altimetrik’s pitch. ALTi AIOS is built for so-called brownfield enterprise environments, where existing systems must be connected to AI tools rather than rebuilt from scratch. The platform provides a unified operational layer for managing models, data, governance and interactions between people and AI systems.

Enterprise Focus

Altimetrik argues that one of the main barriers to broader AI use in large organisations is not access to models, but the difficulty of embedding them into live operations with proper controls. In that context, governance, orchestration and trust have become as important to buyers as model performance.

Raj Sundaresan, Chief Executive Officer at Altimetrik, linked the membership to that agenda.

“Joining the World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence is a milestone for Altimetrik and an opportunity to help shape the global agenda on enterprise AI,” said Raj Sundaresan, Chief Executive Officer at Altimetrik.

“AI is receiving unprecedented attention, but real transformation requires more than deploying tools. It requires organisations to be engineered to run AI responsibly, securely and at scale,” he said.

Those remarks underline a growing debate in the corporate AI market over what responsible deployment means in practice. For some companies, it centres on model safety and data handling. For others, it also includes auditability, operational resilience and the ability to monitor how AI systems behave when embedded in customer-facing or regulated workflows.

Altimetrik says ALTi AIOS is intended to address those operational concerns by standardising how organisations manage AI systems and by building governance into the deployment process from the outset. The aim is to move AI beyond isolated experiments towards broader use across the business with measurable results.

Wider Debate

Altimetrik’s addition to the Centre comes as businesses, regulators and industry groups continue to debate how global standards for AI should develop. While there is broad agreement that governance is needed, there is less consensus on how to translate high-level principles into day-to-day operating practices inside large companies.

That leaves room for engineering-led firms to argue that responsible AI is as much an implementation issue as a policy one. In sectors such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing, the challenge often lies in integrating new systems into regulated and business-critical environments without disrupting existing operations.

Niraj Nagrani, Chief Data and AI Officer at Altimetrik, framed the issue around system design and control.

“The enterprises that define the next decade will be the ones that engineer context, orchestration, governance and trust into every layer of their agentic systems, not bolt it on after the fact,” said Niraj Nagrani, Chief Data and AI Officer at Altimetrik.

“The World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence is the right platform to advance that agenda, and we’re proud to bring ALTi AIOS and our production AI experience to that conversation,” he said.

Altimetrik joins the Centre as companies seek a stronger voice in how AI rules and standards are shaped, particularly around deployment in established enterprises where the technical and governance issues are more complex than in greenfield systems.

David Wilson Homes Southern made the contribution to Benson Community Shed, a scheme that offers adults a space for social connection and practical activities, including woodworking, DIY, and skill-sharing.

The donation will go towards the group’s efforts to purchase a permanent base in Benson.

Robert Field, chair of trustees at Benson Community Shed, said: “We are very pleased with the wonderful support we have received in bringing Benson Community Shed to life, particularly from businesses operating locally that value what we do.

“It is so encouraging that David Wilson Homes is among the growing number of organisations that recognise the social and community benefits of the Shed movement. They deserve our sincere thanks for their support.”

The group aims to tackle social isolation, boost confidence, and improve wellbeing through hands-on activities.

Open to anyone over 18, the shed also provides a welcoming place to socialise.

Campbell Gregg, managing director at David Wilson Homes Southern, said the group provides ‘a valuable space for people to connect, share skills and support one another’.

He said: “Community groups like this play an essential role in improving wellbeing and reducing isolation, and we hope our donation helps to support the group’s fundraising efforts and enables it to continue its important work locally.”

The group is based near the housebuilder’s Chiltern Grange development.

For more information or to donate, visit the group’s Facebook page by searching for Benson Community Shed.