For companies expanding across borders, artificial intelligence has become an increasingly valuable business tool. According to McKinsey’s 2025 Superagency in the Workplace report, 78% of organizations already use AI in at least one business function, with market research, competitive analysis, and strategic planning among its most common applications. Yet even the most advanced analytics cannot replace the relationships that underpin successful international business.
“AI tells you what and where. It doesn’t tell you how to enter a market or who to trust,”
says Liubov Stashkevich, an expert in international business development, strategic partnerships, and cross-border communications.
With more than eight years of experience managing international partnerships across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East Stashkevich has seen firsthand where technology accelerates international expansion and where human judgment remains indispensable.
In this interview with TechBullion, she discusses where AI is already improving international business development, why trust remains the foundation of successful cross-border partnerships, and which skills will matter most as companies increasingly combine technology with global expansion strategies.
Liubov, recent research shows that companies are increasingly relying on AI to evaluate foreign markets and identify business opportunities before expanding internationally. Based on your experience building partnerships across different countries, where does AI genuinely improve international business development?
AI has become an excellent tool for the research stage of international expansion. It can quickly analyze markets, identify trends, monitor regulations, and help companies compare opportunities across different countries. That allows teams to make faster, better-informed decisions. Even global organizations such as HSBC are expanding the use of AI to help employees analyze information, prepare for client meetings, and prioritize opportunities, while keeping human judgment at the center of decision-making.
Where AI reaches its limits is relationship building. It cannot build trust, understand what motivates people, or anticipate how they will respond when negotiations become difficult. International business is still built on human relationships. AI can identify opportunities, but people are the ones who turn those opportunities into long-term partnerships.
You mentioned that AI can identify opportunities, but it cannot build trust or fully understand the dynamics of human relationships. Can you share a recent example from your own experience where the success of an international partnership depended on something AI simply couldn’t have predicted?
A few years ago I was working on a partnership in the Gulf. On paper, everything lined up. The numbers made sense, the market was right. If you plugged it into any analytics tool today, it’d probably have recommended the deal. But none of that mattered to the person sitting across the table. He kept coming back to something much simpler: who we were, who could speak for our reputation, and how long we had been building our business. He wasn’t asking for more presentations or paperwork. He was paying attention to the way I answered his questions, the confidence behind my words, and whether he felt he could trust us.
At one point, our chairman flew in just to have dinner with him. They barely discussed the contract. The purpose of the visit was simply to spend time together and get to know each other. That dinner did more to move the partnership forward than any presentation or financial model could have. It’s the kind of moment that doesn’t show up in data, but in international business it often makes all the difference.
During your work as Manager of Foreign Relations at Avant Garde Maritime Services, you dealed with international partners across Germany, China, India, Singapore, and the UAE. In your own work, what kinds of international business development tasks do you regularly delegate to AI, and which ones do you always keep for yourself?
I use AI regularly, especially when I’m researching new markets, reviewing regulations, translating documents, or preparing background materials before meetings. It speeds up the work considerably and helps me focus on the bigger picture rather than spending hours gathering information.
Where I don’t rely on AI is the relationship-building part of the job. Every negotiation is different. Sometimes you need to spend time getting to know the people before discussing business or recognize that a hesitant answer doesn’t necessarily mean rejection. It may simply mean the other side needs more time or additional internal discussions. Those are things you learn only by working with people in different countries and business cultures. Experience helps you understand what isn’t being said, and that’s something technology still can’t replace.
You have worked with businesses across several Asian markets, each with its own business culture and negotiation style.Technology can help companies prepare for international negotiations. What signals still can only be recognized through experience?
Cultural understanding isn’t a nice-to-have. I’ve seen identical commercial terms succeed in one country and fail in another because of how they were presented. In some markets, you spend three meetings building the relationship before mentioning business. In others, that would be seen as wasting time.
Technology can help with the basics: cultural briefings, etiquette guidance, translation. But it can’t teach you to recognize when silence means “I disagree” versus “I need time to think.” Those nuances only come from experience and genuine curiosity about how people operate in different contexts.
Throughout your career, your work has focused on developing long-term relationships between companies from different countries. How has the role of trust changed as businesses become more dependent on digital tools?
Trust hasn’t become less important. It’s become harder to build. When most communication happens through screens, you lose the informal moments: the coffee before the meeting, the dinner after, the small exchanges that reveal character. At the same time, the pace has accelerated. Deals that once took six months of in-person relationship-building now happen in six weeks of video calls.
The fundamentals haven’t changed: consistency, delivering on promises, showing up when things get difficult, but you have to build trust more deliberately now, because the natural opportunities for it are fewer.
Many executives believe that better data naturally leads to better international decisions. Have you encountered situations where excellent analytics still failed to produce successful business partnerships?
Absolutely. Strong analytics can identify promising markets or potential partners, but they cannot predict how two organizations will work together. I’ve seen situations where every indicator looked positive, yet the partnership never developed because expectations, communication styles, or decision-making processes didn’t align.
Data helps you choose where to start. Building a successful partnership still depends on trust, flexibility, and the willingness of both sides to work toward a common goal.
Having coordinated negotiations between companies from different regions, have you experienced situations where the success of a project depended less on commercial terms and more on the relationship between the people involved?
More than I can count.I’ve seen companies choose a partner they trusted over another with a slightly stronger commercial offer. When challenges arise, as they always do, people want to work with partners who communicate openly and stay committed to finding solutions.
In international business, contracts establish expectations, but trust is what helps partnerships survive uncertainty.
Today you work with American companies exploring opportunities in international markets. If a CEO told you that their company had invested heavily in AI but had no strategy for building international relationships, what advice would you give them before expanding into new markets?
I would say that technology should support international growth, not define it. AI can help companies understand markets, identify opportunities, and prepare for expansion, but it cannot build relationships on their behalf.
My advice would be to invest as much in people as in technology. Companies need professionals who understand local markets, business culture, and how long-term partnerships are built. Those capabilities remain essential, regardless of how advanced AI becomes.
