Nasdaq transforms the boardroom experience with AI integration built on Azure

Preserving trust while advancing innovation 

The stakes for boardroom decision-making have never been higher, and the demands on board administrators have never been more intense. For Nasdaq, a global leader in market infrastructure and corporate governance, its Nasdaq Boardvantage platform plays a critical role in how thousands of directors and administrators around the world access information, prepare for meetings, and collaborate. The platform helps boards prepare, align, and collaborate before, during, and after board meetings while simplifying compliance and driving board effectiveness.

As boardroom expectations continued to evolve, Nasdaq remained committed to proactively innovating and enhancing the Nasdaq Boardvantage platform to meet the directors’ needs. That commitment stemmed from a clear challenge: board books were running hundreds of pages, and meeting prep was becoming a heavy lift. Directors didn’t just need documents—they needed insight.

“It’s no longer just about doing tasks faster,” explains Scott Ellison, Vice President of Technology at Nasdaq. “It’s about surfacing the right information at the right time so directors can focus on strategy, not administration.” 

This created a familiar tension: how could Nasdaq modernize the boardroom experience without compromising the strict security, control, and compliance that its customers expect? 

Laying the foundation for intelligent transformation 

When Nasdaq set out to bring generative AI into the boardroom, it didn’t start with features—it started with architecture. Nasdaq Boardvantage, already trusted by more than 4,500 organizations (including nearly half of the Fortune 100), needed to meet the highest standards for security, scale, and governance before introducing AI. 

“Moving to Azure was about more than infrastructure,” notes Mohsin Shafqat, Senior Manager of Software Development at Nasdaq. “It gave us the flexibility and security we needed to safely introduce AI into a governance context.” 

The engineering team re-architected Nasdaq Boardvantage on Microsoft Azure, containerizing its services with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to enable isolated, multitenant environments for each customer. 

At the data layer, Nasdaq relied on Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL as the backbone for all governance data. As Shafqat explains: “Both Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL gave us the right balance of performance, security, and control. The governance workloads we handle are unique, so we needed something that could meet those isolation and encryption requirements.” 

This combination of AKS, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and Azure Database for MySQL created a modern, compliance-ready environment that gave Nasdaq the flexibility to innovate without ever compromising control. 

AI integration and innovation: Making Nasdaq Boardvantage smarter, faster, and safer 

With the foundation in place, Nasdaq turned its focus to intelligence—embedding AI directly into the boardroom experience with Microsoft Foundry. Instead of layering automation for its own sake, the engineering team focused on solving one of the most persistent challenges in corporate governance: information overload.

Nasdaq began enabling generative AI workflows across the platform, using Foundry and Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models. Using these services, the team can develop and deploy intelligent features, such as AI-driven document summarization and agenda assistance, without ever sacrificing transparency or security. 

“Security and trust had to be embedded at every layer,” says Shafqat. “AKS gave us isolation. Foundry gave us guardrails. Azure OpenAI gave us intelligence. And together, they made safer innovation possible.” 

Nasdaq engineers used Azure API Management as the policy-driven API layer to enable controlled, observable, and scalable AI adoption, in addition to Azure Document Intelligence in Foundry Tools. This approach allowed them to incorporate generative AI within the Nasdaq Boardvantage platform to transform directors’ access and process information. 

The first result was a breakthrough summarization capability that could condense lengthy board books into concise, contextually accurate briefs. As a result, directors could absorb hundreds of pages of material in minutes instead of hours. 

Recent enhancements to Nasdaq Boardvantage include AI-powered summarization, which condenses lengthy board materials into concise, actionable briefs, and the Meeting Minutes feature, which automates the creation of meeting documentation. These innovations are designed to help directors and administrators save time, improve focus, and streamline board governance workflows.

“When we built the summarization engine, we didn’t just want speed,” Shafqat points out. “We wanted precision and privacy. Directors needed to trust that every insight was grounded in their data and their environment.” 

That innovation became the foundation for an upcoming AI Board Assistant, a multi-agent system built through Foundry. This assistant will help administrators and directors prepare agendas, flag potential risks, and surface insights from prior meetings—all within a fully isolated, tenant-specific environment. Each feature is designed to align with Nasdaq’s internal framework for responsible AI and built-in safety systems from Microsoft, with the goal of delivering outputs that are accurate, explainable, and responsible. “We wanted AI that works within governance—not outside it,” Shafqat explains. “The agentic architecture let us build experiences that are well protected, contextual, and actually useful.” 

Security and responsible AI: Trust by design 

For Nasdaq, trust isn’t a feature—it’s a foundation. Nasdaq Boardvantage handles some of the world’s most sensitive data: board deliberations, executive compensation, and M&A strategy. Every innovation had to preserve the confidentiality and control that directors depend on. 

“From the beginning, we designed AI for governance, not the other way around,” recalls Angie Ruan, Senior Vice President of Technology at Nasdaq. “That meant embedding security, privacy, and explainability into every layer—because in governance, trust is everything.” 

Nasdaq’s engineering team applied the same rigor to AI as it does to financial systems, enforcing strict access controls, encryption, and human oversight. Each AI feature is deployed within Nasdaq’s controlled environment, helping ensure that sensitive board materials remain isolated and protected. 

Security and innovation evolved together so that generative AI is only activated within controlled workflows, outputs are always reviewed by users, and no customer data is ever shared or retained outside approved boundaries. “Security and governance were never afterthoughts. They’re engineered into how AI is deployed, monitored, and refined. Customers know their data isn’t shared, stored, or exposed—it’s protected by design,” Ruan emphasizes. 

This careful balance of innovation and accountability has become a model inside Nasdaq—and a benchmark for the broader governance industry. “Our customers wanted assurance that AI wouldn’t mean losing control,” Ruan says. “So we built a system that proves they don’t have to choose between innovation and trust.” 

Impact and momentum: From pilot to platform 

When Nasdaq introduced AI into Nasdaq Boardvantage, the goal wasn’t to reinvent the boardroom overnight. It was to make every minute that directors spend there more meaningful. 

Early pilots showed that the platform’s AI-powered summarization can reduce meeting preparation time by nearly 40%. Administrators also noted 25% overall time savings in board prep, and internal testing demonstrated 91% to 97% accuracy in AI-generated summaries and meeting minutes. Users described the new experience as “game-changing,” not because it was novel, but because it felt effortless and trusted. 

“We’re seeing measurable time savings, but more importantly, we’re changing how people engage with information,” Ellison says. “It’s about making better decisions, faster, without ever sacrificing security.” 

With Nasdaq Boardvantage’s AI-powered summarization, governance teams have saved more than 100 hours annually in board preparation. Directors and administrators report up to a 25% reduction in prep time and as much as 60% less time spent reading board materials. Accuracy rates for AI-generated summaries and meeting minutes have reached as high as 91% to 97%, helping directors focus on strategy instead of sifting through hundreds of pages of reports. 

That success has had a ripple effect across Nasdaq. The AI framework developed for Nasdaq Boardvantage is now being reused to modernize other products and internal workflows, accelerating innovation company-wide while maintaining the same governance standards that define Nasdaq’s brand. 

“What started in one platform is now informing how we approach AI across the enterprise. We’re building momentum—and building it the right way,” Ellison adds.