Tokenovate, a UK fintech specialising in post-trade automation and programmable settlement, has appointed Dr Alec Burns as Head of Product Technology as it seeks to expand its legal-first infrastructure for tokenised capital markets.
Burns, formerly an AI product leader at blockchain platform VeChain, joins Tokenovate’s leadership team to oversee product strategy, institutional deployment and the company’s technology roadmap. His role will centre on translating Tokenovate’s underlying architecture into products that can be deployed at scale by financial institutions.
Tokenovate provides post-trade workflows as a service, combining digital legal agreements, the Financial Open Source Foundation’s Common Domain Model (FINOS CDM) and programmable settlement. Its legal-first model begins with the contractual terms of a transaction and converts them into standardised data and predefined lifecycle processes.
The company says this structure is intended to ensure that authorised events generate consistent and auditable outcomes throughout the post-trade lifecycle. Its orchestration layer, Novat, represents contractual rights and obligations as individual settlement states, linking legal intent with operational processing.
Burns will also help determine how artificial intelligence is incorporated into Tokenovate’s products. Initial areas include system configuration, software testing, exception management and operational analysis, while contractual terms and defined lifecycle events will remain the authoritative basis for transaction processing.
The distinction is important for institutional markets, where AI may improve efficiency and identify operational anomalies but cannot replace the legal certainty and deterministic processing required for regulated financial transactions.
“Tokenisation is changing market infrastructure, while legal certainty, common semantics and deterministic processing remain essential,” said Richard Baker, founder and CEO of Tokenovate. “Our focus is on giving institutions a practical way to automate post-trade processes while working across existing and emerging infrastructure.”
Baker said Burns’ experience across blockchain, AI and product development would support the company’s efforts to convert complex engineering into dependable institutional software.
Burns brings more than a decade of experience spanning artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and technology product development. He previously established VeChain’s AI product organisation and has advised large enterprises on AI strategy and implementation through his consultancy, Metis Point.
“Tokenovate’s legal-first architecture keeps contractual intent, economic state and settlement outcomes synchronised across systems,” Burns said. “My focus is to make that architecture composable, straightforward to deploy and ready for institutional scale, while applying AI and distributed technology with engineering discipline.”
Burns holds a PhD in Robotics and Autonomous Systems from the University of Liverpool. He began his career as a research fellow in robotics and AI at University College London before taking senior research and product roles at nChain and VeChain.
He is a named inventor on nine patents and has authored several peer-reviewed publications. Burns also created and hosts Untangling Web3, a podcast covering blockchain and emerging technologies.
