Ricky Sun is Founder and CEO of Ultipa, the real-time graph database he calls the world's fastest, and CTO of Aichax. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Ricky Sun explains how a real-time graph database and explainable, white-box AI keep connected data queryable in real time and stop hallucination before enterprise AI ever reaches production.Ricky's career runs through Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC before he set out to build companies of his own. At Ultipa he built a real-time graph database designed to traverse deeply connected data in microseconds, now used across finance, fraud detection, risk, and compliance. In this conversation he breaks down what a graph database is, why it answers questions a relational database cannot, and what it actually takes to make deep graph traversal fast at scale.We dig into where a real-time graph database sits alongside the vector databases and embeddings most teams reach for first, and why Ricky prefers the phrase graph augmented intelligence to plain artificial intelligence. He makes the case for explainability and white-box AI: why today's models are so hard to reason about, and how a graph turns a black box into something you can inspect, audit, and trust.From there we get into Aichax and its blunt promise that hallucination ends here, the season-long question of why roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots never reach production, and how graph and explainability change that math. Ricky also talks standards, from the Linked Data Benchmark Council to the ISO GQL graph query language, and shares what he has learned building deep-tech engineering teams across the US and China over two decades.About Ricky Sun:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickysun/- https://www.ultipa.com- https://aichax.aiAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction2:30 From Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC to founding Ultipa7:00 What a real-time graph database actually does13:00 Real-time graph database vs vector databases for AI19:00 Explainable white-box AI and graph augmented intelligence26:00 Ending hallucination: inside Aichax33:00 Why enterprise AI pilots die before production40:00 Graph analytics for fraud, risk, and compliance in finance46:00 Standards, ISO GQL, and the Linked Data Benchmark Council52:00 Advice for CTOs adopting graph and explainable AI#GraphDatabase #ExplainableAI #AIinProduction

Justin Marcucci is President of Apexon, a digital engineering services firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, where he leads the global commercial organization. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Justin Marcucci traces a rare path through digital engineering, founder, design-led operator, and executive at scale, and what it actually takes to build and lead teams that own outcomes.

Justin started and ran Nickelfish, an interactive design agency, for thirteen years before Endava acquired it and he stayed on as Chief Digital Officer for nearly a decade, running North American and global industry P&Ls through Endava's global expansion and its 2018 NYSE IPO. He unpacks the inflection points that reshaped Nickelfish, what selling the company taught him about his own business, and what made a long post-acquisition integration actually work.

Now at Apexon, an AI-first technology services firm, with over 5,000 employees across the USA, UK, India and Mexico, Justin talks through his first ninety days in the President seat, and how a company built out of four merged startups keeps design and user thinking at the center of an industry that has become AI- and engineering-led. He details Apexon's new AI Center of Excellence, its focus on enterprise and agentic AI architectures, and how AI is changing both client delivery and how he runs the commercial org.

The conversation gets specific on the operator's craft: scaling teams in a consulting-led services business, hiring senior leaders who own outcomes instead of just executing, and how PE-backed growth differs from running a digital business inside a public company. Justin closes with what he'd tell someone earlier in their career trying to build something durable in digital.

About Justin Marcucci:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-marcucci-1a6ab533/

- https://www.apexon.com

About Federico Ramallo

Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Introduction

2:30 What the President of Apexon actually does

6:15 Starting Nickelfish and thirteen years running it

12:40 Selling Nickelfish to Endava: the lessons

18:05 Chief Digital Officer through Endava's IPO

24:30 Moving to the Apexon President seat

29:50 First ninety days and what surprised him

34:20 Keeping design and UX central in an AI-led industry

39:10 Scaling teams in a consulting-led services business

43:35 Hiring senior leaders who own outcomes

47:50 Using AI across delivery and the commercial org

52:15 PE-backed growth vs running inside a public company

55:40 Building a durable career in digital

#DigitalEngineering #TechLeadership #ScalingTeams