Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Founding CEO of API.ai (Acquired by Google and Now Dialogflow) – Voicebot Podcast Ep 197
Ilya Gelfenbeyn was the founding CEO of API.ai. He and his team were true pioneers in the voice AI industry and were rewarded for those efforts through an acquisition by Google in 2016. API.ai was the development environment that most of the first Google Actions were built upon. It is better known today as Dialogflow after its rebranding in 2017, and is one of the most widely used solutions for building conversational AI experiences.
What you may not know is that API.ai was preceded by Speaktoit which was known as the Siri of Android. Speaktoit amassed over 40 million users for the app-based virtual assistant. The experience taught the team a lot about the tooling required to deploy a successful conversational assistant. That ultimately led to the creation of developer tools and the pivot into API.ai.
Gelfenbeyn later was a founding member of Google Assistant investments where he was involved in direct funding of several prominent voice AI startups. Today he leads an angel syndicate called The AI where he invests in AI-related companies.
Show Notes – Ilya Gelfenbeyn Interview – Dialogflow / API.ai
- Follow Ilya on Twitter and the web: @gelfenbeyn The AI
- Read about Google’s API.ai acquisition on Voicebot: Google Acquires API.ai
- Read the latest about Dialogflow on Voicebot: Google Launches Dialogflow CX in Beta
You can listen to the podcast interview above, on Google or Apple Podcasts or most of the leading podcast players.
Follow @bretkinsella Follow @voicebotai
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