About Sigma Cognition

We believe that the combination of technical expertise and quality data leads to the best outcomes in AI initiatives. Leaning on decades of experience in AI research, development, and implementation as well as a deep understanding of training data and its impact on models, we help our clients bring even the most unique and complex projects to life.

Our service philosophy

Each client is unique — in their domain, in their challenges and goals, in the data they have available, their level of AI adoption, and how they operate day-to-day. This is why we follow a highly customized approach to our work with clients.

Understanding your goals, data and processes

We begin each new project by gathering a holistic understanding of your individual goals, your available data, and operative processes. With this broad understanding, we can uncover new ideas for how AI can transform your processes, create new value, and find optimal solutions to highly complex challenges.

Service adapted to your level of AI adoption

No matter where you are in your journey of implementing AI in your organization, we tailor our services and approach to your needs. Bring us a concrete project, or simply a question about how AI could support your business — we can support you from strategy through to delivery of a finished solution.

Augment and extend your team’s capabilities

Our approach is high-touch. We value the relationships we build with clients and want you to feel like our teams are an extension of your own. Our experts in data engineering, AI and ML model design and project managers work collaboratively with your team, augmenting their capabilities to deliver you the best possible result.

Cognition is our vision

We chose the name “Cognition” because it refers to thinking. While the AI and machine learning models we build for our clients now “think” in a more limited sense, our future aim is to move towards true cognitive systems, combining multiple data streams and developing more complex models that bring our AI solutions to a higher level of thought. 

But rather than replicating or replacing human intelligence, we believe AI is at its best when it augments human capabilities. Machine intelligence can process higher volumes of information, in a spectrum beyond what humans can perceive. We want to be a part of steering these capabilities towards a positive cause, contributing to new approaches in medical diagnostics, sustainability efforts, and greater human wellbeing.

Executive team

Serial AI entrepreneur and researcher with over 30 years of experience in the field, Tapias believes that AI is only worthwhile when it’s helping people. With a focus on speech and language technologies, he applied his expertise from years of research to some of the first real-world applications of speech recognition in telephone services in the early 1990s. He led major AI initiatives as Head of UX at Telefónica Movistar and Innovation Strategy Consultant at Telefónica before breaking out as a founder, with ventures including Agnitio, Sigma.AI, and Sigma Cognition. 

Tapias holds a PH.D. in electrical engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He is co-author of three books on speech and language technologies, published over 50 papers, and taught more than 30 courses as an adjunct professor.

Dr. Daniel Tapias ->

Co-Founder and CEO

With over 25 years experience in business consulting for taxation, accounting, and company acquisition and sale, Gómez is currently Founder & CEO of Tax Planning in addition to her role as CFO of Sigma. She has extensive international experience with US and EU multinational companies, and leads Sigma’s internationalization efforts.

An expert in domestic taxation in Spain, double taxation treaties, audit processes and international accounting principles, Gómez holds degrees in Economics and Business (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) as well as Tax Consultancy for enterprises (Centro de Estudios Financieros). She previously held management positions for tax consultancy at enterprises such as Cableurope (ONO Group) and Coopers & Lybrand (PwC).

Nuria Gómez ->

Co-Founder and CFO

With a deep background in speech recognition, internet of things and insurance telematics, Bernat believes in using his passion for technology to help people and organizations. At Sigma, he leads the product teams in creating the suite of machine learning and automation technologies that make highest-quality annotation possible at a massive scale. 

Before Sigma, Bernat held positions from CTO to innovation and people manager to researcher and lead developer — a combination of perspectives which give him a broad vision of technology within organizations. He obtained his Computer Science degree from Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and his PhD in IoT from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and has over 25 years of experience in AI, IoT and speech recognition.

Dr. Jesús Bernat ->

Chief Technology Officer

Carlos brings to Sigma over 25 years of experience managing, scaling, and transforming companies from various sectors — including retail, health, corp facilities, and hospitality — and implementing state-of-the-art technology such as IoT, Big Data, and AI..

His career included management positions at El Corte Inglés IT department and Telefónica Group Marketing Department. In 2015, he was appointed CEO of Telefónica OnTheSpot Services, a company specializing in the digitalization of physical spaces using IoT..

Carlos is an Industrial Engineer, with an MBA from the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. He also served as a Marketing Professor and Head of the Marketing Subject of the MBA at the IEB in Madrid and the EOI School in Madrid.

Carlos Marina Civera ->

Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)

Plasencia is a lawyer with over 20 years of experience working with corporates and startups developing innovative technologies. She is an expert in new technology law, corporate law, data protection, intellectual property rights, technology transfer and licensing and more. Building her professional career at Telefónica, Plasencia’s responsibilities included leading the Legal Department, acting as Secretary of the Board of Directors for the Research and Development Center, and serving as Head of the Legal Department in the Product Innovation Unit.

Plasencia holds a law degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a Master’s in business consultancy & labor law from the Escuela de Práctica Jurídica, & a Master’s in new technology law & intellectual property rights from the Instituto de Empresa — among other courses & masters.

Pilar Plasencia ->

Chief Legal Officer

Junqua has a track record of managing and leading groundbreaking innovations resulting in positive growth and profit, with over 25 years of experience as a global executive in the US, Europe and Japan. As Vice President of Panasonic R&D for North America, he established Pansonic’s research and development activities in Silicon Valley. After leading an internal startup at Panasonic, he has helped numerous startups and public companies innovate and reach their next level of growth. He is convinced that mission, purpose, social good and a collaborative customer-oriented culture are key ingredients for sustainable success. 

Junqua is the inventor or co-inventor of more than 100 patents and has authored 100+ peer-reviewed articles and 3 books on speech recognition and corporate and startup innovation.

Dr. Jean-Claude Junqua ->

Executive Senior Advisor

Our sister company, Sigma AI

Sigma AI is a global training data collection, preparation and annotation services company focused on providing highest quality training data at scale with a human touch. They count 4 of the 5 global tech giants among their clients. 

Thanks to our close collaboration, we can tap into their wealth of experience from thousands of ambitious projects to better understand how training data will impact the models we design and build. This data-centric view on model development gives us an edge in understanding your data and how to use it to build superior custom solutions for you.

Sigma values

Across Sigma companies, we share core values that inform all of our practices — within teams, with clients, and how we operate in the world at large.

EN