Rezolve Ai Investor Day: Partnership Panel - Howe Gu, Kimberly McKinley & Saurabh Atri - REZOLVE AI PLC

Thank you again for the time and coming back and joining us. Quick introduction myself as Ermi mentioned, SVP of Customers and Partners, which means I have the privilege of serving and supporting the 1,000 plus customers that Resolve AI currently supports, but also means that I get to work with amazing partners like Microsoft and TCS and building out our partner ecosystem and allowing us to scale through partners. And so this includes our cloud hyperscaler partnerships, our consultancies and GSI partnerships, our ISVs and payment provider partnerships, all that kind of fits under that umbrella. So very excited today to have two of our amazing partners. First, we have Kimberly from Microsoft, Senior Director of Microsoft's Frontier Company. She works with Microsoft's most strategic Fortune 500 customers, advising them on AI-led transformation. And then we have Saurabh, who leads TCS's retail and consumer goods east region. And then formally, I believe you led the go-to-market team for TCS as well. So super happy to have you both here today. So we got some, over the next 15 minutes, we got som hard-hitting questions where we're going to grill them a little bit in terms of how they're working with Resolve. And I think it's really great to have Kimberly from Microsoft and Saurabh from TCS, because there's actually two different dimensions of kind of the technology landscape. On one side, you have Microsoft, who sees some of the most exciting frontier capabilities and technologies and how that fits into the market today and what are the trends they're seeing. On the other side, you have Saurbh from TCS, who is looking at how do we actually get these technologies live in the hands of our customers and actually creating value. And so I think across those two dimensions, those two lenses, you really get a great sense of, number one, how is Resolve positioned in the eyes of our partners, but then how do we actually exist and land in our customers' technology ecosystem as well. So, Kimberly, we're going to start with you. Sure. Almost daily, we are seeing new innovations in AI, like literally every day. New models, new protocols, you know, new consumer AIs are coming out. And the hot topic, the hot top of today, of course, is agentic commerce, which, again, have kind of shifted and disrupted how brands and merchants are thinking about their technology and how they respond to that. Some of them are moving quickly. Some of dem are a bit of deer in the headlights. How do you see the commerce industry preparing for the agentic world? Sure. So it is a very exciting time. The technology is changing daily, including what I get fed to use at work. It's challenging just to keep up with everything. When I think about commerce, and particularly the agenting piece of it, commerce is really everywhere. So we talk about retailers and brands, but think about anything where you transact. business from a from a bank or you know the drugstore anything like that and so when I talk to my customers about it and I see what they're how they're preparing it's really three ways okay so the first thing is you really kind of have to look yourself in the mirror and say is this a journey that my customer is realistically ready to go on and in and how do I know that the second thing that everyone needs to do is get your data ready and then the third is build that semantic layer. So we're going to see some folks move faster in this space. If you're a true luxury brand, shopping with an agent is maybe not the first way that your customer wants to interact with you. Something where you can save time and really cut out a lot of that friction that we heard about in the last session, those are really the more ready cases. But either way, everyone needs to get their data ready. So what does that mean? It means thinking about we've got all of this data now, but what does it mean? How can you connect that customer journey with your data? It doesn't just mean unifying it. It means, you know, really thinking about your brand, you know, machine ready attributes for your products, all your rich brand history, bringing that together. And then the third is the orchestration in that semantic layer. So again, this isn't just unifying the data. It's how can you take everything that you've just readied with all of your brand history, all your product attributes, tie it to pricing, promotion, fulfillment, and then move it along that seamless customer journey that's ready for agentic commerce. Love that. Thank you. Second question, Microsoft is an absolute titan in the tech industry, literally for decades now. In the last three months, I think it added, what, a trillion dollars in market value. Very glad I kept my Microsoft socks. It's cloud and AI technologies power the majority of Fortune 500 companies. You guys have the engineering, the development, the go-to-market resources to really go into any market, any industry vertical that you really wanted to. So I guess my question is, why partner with Resolve AI? Why is this partnership valuable to you? And how do we complement the conversations you're having with the customers and our joint go-to-market strategy? Sure, absolutely. So, you know, sort of to the point you already made, you know it's really we complement one another and that's why we together we have this great go-To-Market. So like you said, you Microsoft brings the platform, the cloud and the AI and so we're an LLM agnostic platform and we also have Foundry as well. So developers at our mutual customers can build on Foundry alongside of us. But what Resolve AI is bringing is that commerce specialization. And so when we bring that in, and especially now, I've loved what I've seen so far today, is really telling that end-to-end story of commerce. And I saw my entire retail life flash before me in the last one when I was thinking about how far we've come since the early 2000s when I started my career as a merchant. But it's really kind of the commerce specialization plus that enterprise level, you know, governed infrastructure, cloud, and AI that we can do together. I love that. And I think one of the common things that, you Know, for me coming from Microsoft and now joining Resolve is that the common theme around trust, right? And that is so critical and so key. I mean, I think that the cliche is that no CIO gets fired for buying Microsoft, right? Or hiring Microsoft. And I think that common, you know, focus around building the trust layer, the ethics, the government, the transparency, the auditability, especially in the AI world is so, so important. And, I think this is, you now, one of the things why, you know, we're so excited about the partnership is because we're both so grounded on that common theme of trust. Absolutely. Yeah. Saurabh, I'm going to switch over to you. Obviously, getting the technology right is one thing. It's often harder to, you know, actually get into the hands of enterprise. And I would argue it's even harder to actually capture value from that technology, right? I think everybody's kind of seen that statistic, that McKinsey statistic of 70% of digital transformations fail. I think it's Even higher now with AI transformation. So for you, someone like you has, you Know, obviously seen a lot of these transformation programs and probably been involved yourself what are some of the pitfalls that you know you see on a dated basis and and have you overcome them through you know the way that you've delivered these type of projects thanks so technology comes second to the point of sounding contrarian when we see a successful project what differentiates them is they are not seen as technology products they are seen as business projects I'll give an example on searchability and you know the conversion we were working with a leading furniture and home improvement customer and we were talking about how can we increase supply chain conversion how can we decrease the customer bounces and all that stuff. But when we were talking to the CEO, he said, look, what I want is the conversion ratio, which today is at 1.1. I want it to go at 1,7 in the next six months. When we are working with the business KPI as the North Star, I think everything else comes together. This is the single most understated learning that we have seen. So have the business KPI first, what is it that the customer wants and then start with the technology as step number two. So this is pretty much what we have learned and you know in our experience when we are working with the customers. I have also wanted to touch point on the conversion angle today. A simple example when I was searching for a gift for my seven-year-old around two days back so she's a big fan of Peppa and yeah and you know I was looking specifically at you know what kind of ceramic utensils I can buy on Peppa and not to disappoint my 17 month old son on also George Pig and goodness me when I'm searching at all the leading retailers, the search results are not what the consumer wants. And I think that is where Resolve fits very uniquely in solving that specific problem for the consumer. Love that. And, I think you said it really well in terms of not starting with technology, but really starting with the use case, the problem we're trying to solve. what is the measure of success and then kind of work backwards from that and I think we often talk about it but actually putting into practice is often a lot harder than it seems getting in front of the right stakeholders making sure that there's alignment and agreement across these stakeholders so that we're actually delivering the agreed business value we're actually measuring the right things once the technology gets implemented so 100% agree second question for you resolve ai's agentic commerce solutions are now installed in you know several of TCS's Paceport Innovation Centers, which means that TCS advisors and consultants are now using the solutions to essentially inspire customers that come to these Paceboard offices and show them how these technologies can transform their business and create business value. Obviously, there's a lot of AI solutions out there, and there's a lot companies that claim and say they do a lot of things probably similar to us and so i guess for for tcs you know we've had a big press release recently but what made resolve ai something you know tcs was comfortable in showcasing uh to customers because you guys are trusted advisors to your customers and and why you guys chose it as kind of a frontier ai solution to actually put into your paceport uh innovation centers uh and And sorry, I know this is a lot of questions to throw in at you. But any immediate current feedback or responses from the customers on these type of solutions? So I would like to start with the initial part of the question on why did DCS chose Resolve to be showcased at Baseboard Hubs. So for the audience, Baseboard hubs, think of it like the innovation hubs wherein we co-curate with our customers some of the solutions together, because each customer is kind of unique. At least, that's what they will tell you. But we also believe that. Now, there are three things with Resolve specifically that came out. Number one was, like Kim alluded to earlier, without data, lot of the AI projects are having a big risk. So Resolve works not only with the customer data but also it has retail specific algorithms to solve some of you know the commerce and agentic commerce issues that the consumers are looking to solve. So the specificity of retail and also the ability to work with the consumer retail specific data. The second thing is traceability. There are a lot of questions today which are coming in from the customers around, I want to know how did the agent make that decision, how can I trace it back. I think Resolve gives that. And the third thing is the plug-and-play. Resolve is not there and this is also a concern from the consumer. Is this tool going to replace my tech stack? So Resolve, is not a rip and replace kind of technology. It sits on the ecosystem that the customer may have, the tech stack that they have and and works on the investments that are already in there. So I think these are the three things that we found which are interesting for us all. And to your other question on what are we seeing from the customer side, there is a lot of work which is happening today. I think it all depends on the maturity of the customer, where are they with data today? Where are they with their technology stack today? What we are seeing as a common thread is a lot of customers are building their own AICOEs. I think this is something that we are seen and as part of the AICOE and also the agent work that Kim mentioned earlier, we are saying a big interest in that whole conversion aspect that or discoverability aspect you know how do I improve the discoverability and conversion of the consumers coming in website and this is where we are seeing an interest in resolve instead of searching and you know give me my public merchandise the ability to interact you know with the agent and you don't understand what consumer is really looking for and giving those specific recommendations and not just recommendations but completing the whole transaction loop with you know payment and everything I think this is what our customers are finding interesting with result and some of them are also looking to drive pilots and point of values. I mean if I can almost summarize some of that I mean some of the things I heard is I think the specificity right the focus around retail around around commerce and how we've had that laser focus around solving problems in this specific vertical in space is obviously very important. I think you both mentioned that. Again, Saurabh, you mentioned around having the traceability, the governance, which ultimately goes down to what we were talking about earlier around trust, right? And how do we make sure that companies now, especially now where there's AI proliferation is so common that my IP, my customers, my data is not getting lost or is being leveraged for someone else's business outcomes or business goals. And, of course, being very clear in terms of what the problems and what the business value want to solve. So I appreciate you guys kind of, you know, highlighting some of those key themes. So thank you. Now, to close, I'm going to ask a question to both of you because, you Know, we're doing a lot together. You know, with Microsoft, we've, you KNOW, just in the last year that I've been in this role, you KNOW we've launched our proprietary models on Foundry. We've done joint go-to-marketing events at like ShopTalk and NRF. You know, we've worked on customers together. But, you know, clearly I am very excited. But what are you, Kimberly, most excited about the partnership and kind of what's ahead for us? Sure. That's an easy one. So I think, you Know, along with everything that we talked about, really there is a lot of interest. You know, most retailers and brands know that we've sort of created, you know, I'm going to call it's sort of like a shopping nightmare, right? Like on e-com now, it's just, you Know, sort, filter, you Know, all of this, and the consumer is really ready for goal-based shopping, you Know, I have, you Know, i think he said it earlier, you Know, have a wedding in tuscany, what should i wear, and what i'm really excited about is that we're seeing the customer interest in the market, and that resolve has, you know, that brings that commerce specialization and can bring it to our platform so that we can go to market together and really come and, you know, have meaningful conversations and implementations ultimately with these enterprises that really do desperately need to reinvent their online shopping experience. And similarly for you, Sara, you Know, we've done a lot together as well. You know, obviously we had the most big press release around the partnership. We've done a lot of enablement sessions with your teams globally. Now we've trained up many of your folks. We've kind of deployed some of our solutions at Paceport. Again, very excited. Same question to you. What are you excited about in terms of the partnership and kind of what's to come? Right time and right partnership and the right strategy. I think this is what comes to my mind at Resolve. Like Kim mentioned, we are at the cusp of a big transformation. technology, agentic commerce, the whole Gen-AI strategy and narrative. I think we did not have a lot of technology to solve some of the problems that we're talking about, you know, 5-10 years back, but today, and at least for the foreseeable future, a lot of companies are going to invest big time in their agentic and AI capabilities. And I believe specifically for retail, I think Resolve holds a great promise in terms of bringing that specificity from the retail domain. We are seeing a lot of Gen-AI products disrupting what we call as the horizontal stream. So think about AI in SDLC, you know, coding and all. But when it comes to the retail specificity, I think Resolve fits the bill really well in solving some of the business problems around merchandising, conversion, commerce. So I think this is going to be very interesting. Amazing. Well, Kimberly, Saurabh, I just want to say thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. I think it's super valuable for us to kind of hear your thoughts, your perspectives around the partnership and things we're working on together today and hopefully in the weeks and months and years ahead as well. I will now pass it over to Arthur and Kate who's going to talk a little bit about Resolves Finance.