Recap of First Rays Annual Day 2025

Last month, First Rays Annual Day gathering brought together founders, CTOs, CISOs, and operators across our ecosystem to trade notes on what's actually working with AI in the enterprise and where the sharp edges still are.

To kickstart the panel, Hersh, CEO of Allstacks, showcased how his customers — about 50+ large enterprises — are rolling out AI-tools in their orgs. He highlighted that AI-native engineering platform leaders are integrating across the SDLC to measure time, cost, and bottlenecks — and now shipping agents that move from analytics to action.

AI adoption is real — and uneven. A fresh engineering survey (~250 leaders globally) shows: ~90% of engineers are already using AI for new code and apps, ~85% for testing/QA, and ~70% for documentation.

"Dashboards are dead; start with the answer." Leaders are ditching passive dashboards in favor of answer-first experiences (and increasingly, agents) that surface "what's happening, why, and what to do next," attach evidence automatically, and orchestrate remediation.

Vibe coding → vibe engineering. As coding assistants proliferate, teams are moving beyond "assist me in this file" to workflow-level orchestration: constructing repeatable multi-step flows that include generation, verification, testing, security checks, and deployment.

Ship secure by default (or pay 4x later). Panelists repeatedly emphasized: getting security involved early saves ~4 out of 5 dollars versus bolt-on fixes after release.

Our second panel discussion focused on Trust, Safety & Identity — "High-Trust AI Without the Headaches." Key themes included: high-trust apps need additional controls beyond AI "as-is," catching problems before they emerge through adversarial prompts and model-internals monitoring, and defense-in-depth beating model-of-the-week.

Identity is the new perimeter. As more workflows become chat- or agent-driven, the system must know who is asking and what they're allowed to do. Strong identity prevents prompt-driven account takeovers and high-impact abuse.