Sean Desmond, president and CEO of cloud banking software firm nCino, said he hadn’t planned on becoming the leader of one of Wilmington’s largest homegrown startups.
“I never had a stated career goal to be the CEO,” Desmond said. “I’m a big believer in focusing on what’s right in front of you. Solve the biggest problem that your company might have, and good things will happen.”
By most accounts, nCino’s biggest problem as of late is how to navigate the advent of artificial intelligence as a software company for financial institutions with strict compliance guidelines.
As the highest-ranking official at one of the biggest tech companies based and grown in Wilmington, Desmond is an important figure, whether he planned to be or not. The decisions he makes ripple through his organization of over 1,700 employees, into the finance and banking industries, and, in some cases, to the rest of Wilmington.
When Desmond replaced nCino founder Pierre Naudé in 2025, he said he wanted the company to leverage AI’s evolving role in software-as-a-service companies.
“The opportunity to capitalize on that and really transform the company, our ways of working, and inject AI into everything that we do, is the big opportunity from a timing standpoint,” he said.
“You only get these sorts of inflection points once every eight or 10 years,” he added.
Previously serving as the chief product officer at nCino, Desmond joined the firm in 2013 after nearly 14 years at Silicon Valley-based enterprise software company Informatica.
After spending nearly two decades at horizontal platform companies born out of the internet boom in the mid- to late-1990s, Desmond was drawn to nCino’s niche solutions for banking tech needs. And he happened to meet Naudé, who is now executive chairman of nCino’s board, at a Christmas party in Wilmington.
The son of public school teachers from Long Island, Desmond’s journey to the world of finance and business was outside of his immediate comfort zone, he said. After graduating from James Madison University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and studying abroad in Florence, Desmond briefly taught English as a second language in Poland.
“I think the opportunity to live in a different culture and understand that the world’s a much bigger place and have the perspective of being in a different surrounding certainly opened my eyes to endless possibilities,” Desmond said.
“I always tell people, go where the growth is and run toward solving the biggest problem,” he added, “and you learn that when you go outside of your immediate sphere.”
Founded in 2011 as a spinoff of Wilmington-based Live Oak Bank, nCino completed its initial public offering in 2020. The firm raised over $250 million and priced over 8 million shares at $31 each.
At the beginning of this year, nCino’s stock value teetered as concerns about software-as-a-service (SaaS) firms in the age of AI hit the market.
Desmond argues that nCino is unlikely to be disrupted by the rise of AI.
“Companies that have deeply embedded intelligence within a workflow framework that are in a regulated space like banking, which requires lots of data to inform good decisions, I think are (on) pretty solid ground,” he said.
During the earnings call for nCino’s fiscal year-end results and fourth quarter earnings, the firm reported a 10% increase in total revenue for fiscal year 2026, with Desmond underscoring the role of AI as a “tremendous tailwind” for the company’s revenue.
The firm launched five “digital partners,” or role-based AI agents, last year as part of its pivot toward AI integration. Results from an nCino survey of 150 bankers, published in May, found that 89% envisioned a “dual workforce” future consisting of AI agents and humans within five years. The survey also noted that AI adoption has yet to yield measurable returns on investment for many bankers.
Still, Desmond is optimistic about the role of AI and for nCino’s future in an uncertain era of AI integration.
“We believe very strongly that once things settle down, there will be a few really big winners in the space that we play in,” he said, “and we’re going to be one of them.”
For Desmond, being headquartered in a city like Wilmington is a motivator: While Wilmington hasn’t quite reached Silicon Valley heights as a booming backdrop for startups, Desmond argues that the city has the core ingredients to build a thriving tech hub.
“We’ve always said, ‘Why not us, why not here?’ There’s no reason that a company from Wilmington can’t go toe to toe with a company from Austin or Silicon Valley and compete and win,” he said, “and we’re doing that.”
See other stories on Technology:
Betting on a Startup Movement
Cybercrime Ramps Up Sophistication
OPINION: Beyond the Lab Bench
nCino CEO Eyes AI Future
