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 along with tens of thousands of chatbots.
It is better known today as Dialogflow after a 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 which we
discuss in today's interview. 


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.