AI powered tax compliance is not a place for a probabilistic answer. Hugo Sarrazin, new CEO of Avalara, joins Alan Shimel on Techstrong TV. Furthermore, they preview CRUSH 2026 in Fort Lauderdale and unpack how AI powered tax compliance actually works at Avalara scale across the globe.

About Hugo Sarrazin

Hugo is ninety days into the CEO seat at Avalara. In addition, he brings a quarter century at McKinsey and prior operating roles as CEO and chief product officer. Consequently, he leans on a Stanford PhD in robotics and AI to frame the current moment as the real payoff.

Inside AI powered tax compliance

Avalara has run the sales and use tax game for twenty two years. As a result, it now serves two million direct and indirect customers across 1200 US jurisdictions and much of Europe and APAC. Meanwhile, the platform calculates tax in real time, files returns, manages exemption certificates and handles cross border and e invoicing.

Hugo insists on a deterministic calc engine at the heart. In addition, AI wraps the calc engine to monitor jurisdictions, read exemption certificates and reimagine slow manual work. Consequently, an agent can flag a tariff change or a new state rule and prompt the finance team to update the configuration on the spot.

Why this matters now

Meanwhile, tariffs, e invoicing rules and cross border logic keep shifting month to month. Furthermore, Hugo argues that AI powered tax compliance only works when a private LLM trains on curated tax data and every step is auditable. In short, the audit trail is the product, not a footnote.

Explore more artificial intelligence coverage and the latest Techstrong TV interviews. In addition, Hugo previews CRUSH 2026 on September 22 to 24 in Fort Lauderdale and a London event on October 8. He also frames reskilling as the true unlock for finance teams that want to lead this shift.

For more information please visit avalara.com