Lightworks

About Lightworks

Lightworks provides enterprise AI services focused on enabling large-scale adoption within highly regulated and security-conscious sectors. Founded by John Painter, the company addresses the challenge of deploying AI in complex, compliance-heavy environments such as financial services, telecommunications, and insurance. In February 2026, the Canadian enterprise AI consultancy secured up to $12 million in a Series B funding round led by Round13 Capital to launch its flagship AI services and accelerate expansion.

The company's core offerings are designed to establish governance, security, and operational frameworks that allow enterprises to move AI initiatives from pilot programs to full-scale production. Lightworks' services include CTO as a Service (CTOaaS), which embeds veteran executives into mission-critical programs to provide direct execution support and leadership. This service focuses on strategy, program design, and execution for major initiatives in AI, cloud, and data migrations.

A flagship program is the Agentic Control Plane (ACP), a joint development consortium with major regulated organizations. The ACP acts as a governance and observability layer for AI at scale, managing the relationships between AI agents, models, and users to ensure security and compliance. It provides policy enforcement, approval management, and regulatory-ready oversight. Another key service is Managed Currency, which offers a disciplined, continuous approach to system upgrades and platform currency, replacing disruptive, large-scale modernization projects with a controlled, workflow-driven process.