Sonny Merla is Amplifon’s Global Data Science & AI Manager and a leader of AmplifAI, the hearing-care company’s program for coordinating artificial intelligence across international teams. His work addresses the operational challenge of deploying AI applications and agents without fragmenting security, governance, or development infrastructure.
After studying at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Merla developed his career in data science and AI at Amplifon. His earlier work included expanding enterprise access to generative AI. Launched in January 2025, AmplifAI formalized that ambition through centralized strategic oversight, coordination across countries and corporate functions, and three operating priorities: governance, platform, and delivery.
- Enterprise agent registries: Merla helped establish Amplifon’s requirements for connected catalogs of Model Context Protocol servers, Agent-to-Agent agents, and business applications. Developed collaboratively with Quantyca, the registry architecture links reusable capabilities with their owners, approved environments, and business use cases; the broader platform remained under development when presented.
- Object lineage and model resilience: Connecting applications to their models, tools, and agents makes dependencies visible when systems fail or underlying models change, while supporting compliance and accountability.
- Developer autonomy with shared guardrails: Standardized security expectations, deployment foundations, and reusable infrastructure let distributed teams concentrate on business logic while maintaining centralized oversight.
Merla also treats employee development as essential to adoption. In Amplifon’s Ride the Change program, he sponsored, mentored, and judged employee AI initiatives. His involvement in Luiss Business School’s AI GROW initiative reflects a complementary commitment to university partnerships, specialist talent, and research.
