Berk Yilmaz: AI for Mission-Critical Software | Ep 1259

About this episode

Berk Yilmaz discusses the impact of AI on software development in regulated environments and the modernization of legacy systems.

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Berk Yilmaz, Co-Founder and CTO of Noah Labs, to discuss how AI is transforming software development in some of the world’s most regulated and security-sensitive environments. Drawing from his background in electrical engineering, computer science, Columbia University research, and NASA-supported projects, Berk shares how his experiences shaped the vision behind Sentinel—an AI-native IDE built for defense, aerospace, critical infrastructure, and other mission-critical industries. Berk explains the challenges of modernizing decades-old legacy systems written in languages like COBOL, Fortran, and C, and how Noah Labs combines AI-assisted migration, formal verification, and deterministic audit trails to ensure accuracy, compliance, and trust. He also explores the importance of energy-efficient AI, air-gapped deployments, and why compliance, security, and verification should be embedded directly into the software development lifecycle. Looking ahead, Berk outlines how AI-native development environments will reshape regulated software engineering by making compliance an automatic byproduct of…

People in this episode

Host: Brian Thomas

Guest: Berk Yilmaz

Topics covered

• AI in software development
• mission-critical industries
• legacy systems modernization
• compliance and security
• energy-efficient AI
• software development lifecycle

Keywords

• AI
• software development
• legacy systems
• compliance
• security
• Noah Labs
• Sentinel
• energy-efficient AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Noah Labs, Columbia University, NASA

Products: Sentinel

Places: defense, aerospace, critical infrastructure

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