Sparta Global welcomes Craig Hodgson as CIO to accelerate its AI-native future
With 30 years of experience across technology, consultancy and AI transformation, Craig Hodgson joins Sparta Global as Chief Information Officer with a clear ambition: to make Sparta Global AI-native and help our client partners unlock the same opportunity.
For Craig, the opportunity presented by AI is ultimately about more than technology. It is about co-intelligence: how people and technology can work together to achieve more.
That belief has been shaped by a career spanning 30 years in technology. Craig began his career as a technical trainer before going on to build and lead his own software engineering consultancy for 10 years and, more recently, establishing Fidra, with a focus on AI and data analytics.
Craig’s relationship with Sparta Global is not a new one. Over the years, his career has regularly crossed paths with CEO David Rai and members of Sparta Global’s wider leadership team through shared industry circles, projects and interests. He has also worked alongside Sparta Global on client projects over the past decade.
That familiarity with the business, combined with a shared ambition to develop people and harness technology, made the opportunity to join Sparta Global particularly compelling.
“I’ve known Sparta Global and its leadership for many years, and our paths have crossed through shared projects, clients and ambitions. What attracted me to this role is that Sparta is already doing many of the things I’ve been passionate about throughout my career: developing brilliant people, embracing technology and bringing the two together. For me, that’s what co-intelligence is about, and I’m incredibly excited to help make that vision a reality both within Sparta and for our client partners.”
Through Fidra, Craig has focused increasingly on AI readiness and technology transformation, building working AI and technology solutions for major global technology companies, including Dell and NVIDIA, as well as other organisations seeking to harness AI.
He now brings that experience to Sparta Global, combining it with our technology talent, client partnerships and ambition to help organisations turn the potential of AI into meaningful transformation.
Bringing people and technology together
Central to Craig’s approach is co-intelligence.
Despite spending three decades working in technology, Craig’s interest has never been confined to the technology itself. His background and interests span computer science and physics, alongside anthropology, culture and human behaviour.
That combination has shaped a simple principle: organisations cannot realise the full potential of AI by focusing on the technology alone.
For Craig, that means starting with people:
“The conversation around AI often starts with the technology. I think it needs to start with people. Understand how people work, where their expertise creates value and where technology can help them achieve more. That’s what co-intelligence means to me. The real opportunity with AI isn’t simply doing the same things differently. It’s enabling the people you already have to do more.”
Organisations first need to understand how their people work, where knowledge sits, how time is being spent and where AI and automation can make a meaningful difference.
It shifts the conversation from simply asking, “What can AI do?” to “What could our people do with AI?”
Making Sparta Global AI-native
This philosophy will underpin two closely connected areas of Craig’s role. The first is internal: helping Sparta Global become an AI-native organisation.
AI has dramatically lowered many of the traditional barriers to experimentation. People can explore ideas, test new approaches and find different ways to solve problems faster than ever before.
The challenge is turning that experimentation into meaningful change across an organisation.
For Sparta Global, becoming AI-native means understanding how our people work today, identifying where AI and automation can genuinely improve what we do, and putting the right technologies and skills in place to support them.
It also provides an opportunity to practise internally what we advocate externally, applying AI across our own business and taking those experiences into the work we deliver for our client partners.
Turning experience into client impact
The second major focus of Craig’s role is firmly on Sparta Global’s client partners.
Organisations everywhere are exploring AI, but experimenting with new tools and becoming genuinely AI-ready are two very different things.
Real transformation requires businesses to understand where AI can create value, how it fits into existing operations and, critically, how their people will work alongside it.
Craig brings practical experience from Fidra of developing working AI and technology solutions for major global technology organisations, alongside expertise spanning areas including generative AI, vision AI and AI-powered knowledge assistance.
Combined with Sparta Global’s experience in developing technology skills and embedding talent into client organisations, this strengthens our ability to support clients from identifying the opportunity through to delivering it.
This is where Sparta Global’s focus on people and Craig’s approach to technology come together: building the technology organisations need while developing and enabling the people who will make the most of it.
CEO and Founder David Rai on Craig’s appointment
“I’ve known Craig and his work for many years, and there has always been a strong alignment in how we think about technology, people and the opportunity presented by AI. Bringing Craig into Sparta Global as CIO, alongside Fidra becoming part of the business, is a significant appointment for us. It will help us push our AI-native approach even further, accelerate what we’re already doing and open up new opportunities for our business and our clients.
Craig brings specialist AI expertise and, crucially, first-hand experience of building and scaling AI solutions for large organisations. Combined with Sparta Global’s technology talent and capability-building expertise, that adds real technical depth to our business.
As more organisations move from experimenting with AI to taking on larger, more complex transformation programmes, Craig brings the experience of having tackled those challenges first-hand. He can help our clients make the right decisions, understand what it takes to deliver at scale and build the technology and capability needed to turn their AI ambitions into lasting value.”
What this means for Fidra customers
For Fidra customers, becoming part of Sparta Global means continuity with greater capability behind it.
The entire Fidra team will join Sparta Global from 1 November 2026, with existing contacts, project knowledge and delivery teams remaining in place. Customers can continue working with the people who know their businesses and projects, with existing services, delivery commitments and day-to-day working relationships continuing as normal.
What changes is the scale of expertise and support available around them. As part of Sparta Global, Fidra customers will gain access to a much broader pool of AI, data, security and technology specialists, spanning areas including AI engineering, automation, cloud, software engineering and cybersecurity, alongside Sparta Vanguard’s senior consulting and managed delivery capability and the training and workforce enablement expertise of our AI & Tech Institute.
This brings greater capacity to support larger and more complex projects, additional specialist resources when required, and dedicated engineering and product expertise to continue developing solutions such as COMPASS Knowledge Assistant.
In short, Fidra customers retain the people, knowledge and approach they value today, while gaining the scale, breadth of expertise and delivery resilience of Sparta Global.
From AI experimentation to transformation
Technology will continue to evolve, but Craig believes AI represents a fundamental and lasting shift in how organisations and their people will work.
The question for businesses is increasingly moving beyond whether they should adopt AI towards how they turn experimentation into meaningful, sustainable transformation.
Technology will play a crucial part in that journey, but technology alone will not determine its success. People will. That is why co-intelligence sits at the centre of Craig’s vision for his new role and Sparta Global’s continued evolution.
The ambition is twofold: to make Sparta Global an AI-native organisation and bring that experience, combined with our people and technology expertise, to help our client partners do the same.
Because the real opportunity presented by AI isn’t simply what the technology can do. It’s what people can do with it.