Victor Venegas Mendoza, Head of Europe Strategy & Alliances for Hancom Europe. Courtesy of Hancom [Financial News] As Hancom moves to expand in the European market, it has brought in a local expert with a broad partner network as its new managing director. The company plans to accelerate the development of an integrated AI agent operating system in Europe, where demands for AI sovereignty have been rapidly codified into policy.
On the 16th, Financial News spoke with Victor Venegas Mendoza, head of strategy and partnerships for Hancom Europe, in a written interview about the company’s European expansion plans. Mendoza is a German national who specializes in enterprise business development, cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS), cybersecurity infrastructure, and building partner ecosystems in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). A veteran with 17 years of experience in SaaS business development, he co-founded ShoreLion, an IT business development company, and maintains a strong network of local customers and partners across Europe, including Poland.
Mendoza said he joined Hancom because public institutions, health care providers, financial firms, and operators of critical infrastructure in Europe face strong pressure to undergo AI transformation (AX), but have been reluctant to adopt AI over concerns about data leakage. "Hancom's on-premises approach solves this problem head-on," he said. He explained that Hancom's on-premises model keeps data from leaving an institution's infrastructure, and that, combined with the company's strong document-processing capabilities, its fit with the European market has become clear.Hancom recently announced its transition into a Sovereign Agentic Operating System company. The system helps businesses use AI agents in on-premises environments without sending data outside their own infrastructure. He said this aligns well with Europe, given Hancom's 36 years of accumulated expertise in document processing.
Mendoza noted that customers in regulated industries face major procurement and compliance risks even when data is sent to external clouds. "Once they understood that Hancom handles data entirely within the customer's infrastructure, they moved from 'review' to 'execution planning,'" he said.
Hancom has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with 7Bulls, a state-certified Research and Development Center in Poland, to carry out joint R&D for localizing the next-generation Sovereign Agentic OS in Europe. "Poland offers the right conditions to test, for the first time, how Hancom fits into the European market, thanks to its regulatory environment, dense local partner ecosystem, and the relationships built over time," Mendoza said.
"Our partners already have direct access to public administration, health care, finance, and insurance customers, all of which urgently need on-premises AI. " He added, "If Hancom's on-premises model is validated in Poland, the DACH market will be the natural next stage.
We designed the partner-led model built in Poland so it can be transferred as is. " Starting with Mendoza's appointment, Hancom is also considering establishing a European subsidiary in the long term.
"Poland and the DACH region are the foundation, but the issue of Sovereign AI spans the entire European continent," he said. "To that end, we will create Hancom's first reference case in Europe and use it to build brand awareness across the region.
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jiany@fnnews.com Youn Ji-an Reporter
