In this theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Mixture of Experts segment from the New York Stock Exchange, theCUBE’s John Furrier sits down with Raj Verma, CEO of SingleStore, to unpack how the intersection of technology and finance is shaping enterprise strategy. Verma shares why SingleStore is “on course” for the public markets, reflects on brand-building through the company’s partnership with golf Hall of Famer Padraig Harrington and connects that ethos to how SingleStore helps organizations fix struggling data “swings.” The discussion zeroes in on what’s next as Wall Street watches the AI infrastructure buildout: after chips and systems, the software and data layers set the pace for value creation.
Verma outlines why enterprises must modernize “brown” data estates into “green” ones to safely bring corporate context, governance and compliance into LLM workflows via RAG – and why commoditized data-at-rest puts the advantage at the query layer that unifies data in motion with data at rest. He predicts agentic AI will gain reasoning capabilities in roughly 18 months, cites industry indicators like Google reporting ~25% of its software now built by AI and argues that high switching costs will give way to disruption as buyers reassess legacy vendors. The conversation closes with concrete momentum: ~33% YoY growth, ARR in the ~$135M range, gross dollar retention ~98%, cloud NDR ~130, ~50% of business now in the cloud, landing ~3 new customers per day, a path to cash-flow breakeven in the next two quarters and a teaser for AI-related announcements in the next two months. Listeners will find notable stats, real-world use cases and forward-looking views on how databases power reliable AI at enterprise scale.
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Jenny Shao, Robyn AI
In this theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Mixture of Experts segment from the New York Stock Exchange, theCUBE’s John Furrier sits down with Raj Verma, CEO of SingleStore, to unpack how the intersection of technology and finance is shaping enterprise strategy. Verma shares why SingleStore is “on course” for the public markets, reflects on brand-building through the company’s partnership with golf Hall of Famer Padraig Harrington and connects that ethos to how SingleStore helps organizations fix struggling data “swings.” The discussion zeroes in on what’s next as Wall Street watches the AI infrastructure buildout: after chips and systems, the software and data layers set the pace for value creation.
Verma outlines why enterprises must modernize “brown” data estates into “green” ones to safely bring corporate context, governance and compliance into LLM workflows via RAG – and why commoditized data-at-rest puts the advantage at the query layer that unifies data in motion with data at rest. He predicts agentic AI will gain reasoning capabilities in roughly 18 months, cites industry indicators like Google reporting ~25% of its software now built by AI and argues that high switching costs will give way to disruption as buyers reassess legacy vendors. The conversation closes with concrete momentum: ~33% YoY growth, ARR in the ~$135M range, gross dollar retention ~98%, cloud NDR ~130, ~50% of business now in the cloud, landing ~3 new customers per day, a path to cash-flow breakeven in the next two quarters and a teaser for AI-related announcements in the next two months. Listeners will find notable stats, real-world use cases and forward-looking views on how databases power reliable AI at enterprise scale.
>> Hello, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in theCUBE's NYSE Wired Studio. Of course, we have our Palo Alto Studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. This is our mixture of expert series that we talk to leaders, experts in their field who want to contribute to our index and our community. Jenny Shao is here. She's been a CUBE alumni back. She's also the founder and CEO of Robyn AI, which we've talked about before about almost a year ago here in theCUBE at the NYSE. She's back with lots of momentum, her seed of an idea generated momentum product launch. It's launching this week. Jenny, welcome back to theCUBE here-
Jenny Shao
>> Thanks for having me back....
John Furrier
>> At our NYSE Wired Studio.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, thanks for having me back, always happy to talk with you.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, it's great to see the momentum. When we last spoke here, it was part of our series, AI Leaders. You had an idea how you could change people's lives using AI technology, and it was a really cool session. You were sharing your vision. We were riffing on some of the impacts of society.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes, I remember.
John Furrier
>> How technology could change things. Now you've made it a reality.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> You have funding. You have a product that's out in the market. You're launching a big ad campaign in the subways and billboards. You have momentum and traction and lift with users. Congratulations.
Jenny Shao
>> Thank you. Thank you. We are so excited. Last time we spoke, just like you said, it was very much an idea that we are very passionate and we started building it. And right now, to see Robyn in the hands of everybody, to hear these stories and see our campaign, but most importantly, see the product come to life and everyone who's using it, our community, their stories, it's really, it's entirely why we built Robyn. So it's definitely been an amazing, amazing year, and we're just getting started.
John Furrier
>> So if you search Robyn, R-O-B-Y-N.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Not Robyn with an I, Robyn with a Y, Robyn AI. You can check out the app. Give us an update. I want to get the hard news out there. Products available. Where can I get it? What's the process? How do I use it? What does it do?
Jenny Shao
>> I love it. So you can find us everywhere on the Apple App Store. Currently, we're just iOS, but you search R-O-B-Y-N, we're the first thing on top. It says, Robyn, talk, feel, grow, and then you just download.
John Furrier
>> Talk, feel, grow.
Jenny Shao
>> Talk, feel, grow. Yes. So Robyn talk, feel, grow. You can download it on the app store and then you really just get to using it. And Robyn, we very much built it to be kind of your emotionally intelligent partner, which is something that reflects you back to you and really feels like it really knows you. In my opinion, the best tech is really tech that kind of disappears under the surface. And then all you see is yourself because it's not about the tech per se, it's about the user. It's about the human who's actually using the technology. And I can't wait for everyone to really experience that. We've already been hearing from our community people who have been using Robyn on everything they're using Robyn for, and that's always the favorite part of my day is hearing these stories. We've heard that Robyn helped me save my marriage. Robyn made me a better husband, and Father, Robyn helped me through a divorce. Robyn helped me ask the girl out. So it's really ramping up and I'm so excited to see it live.
John Furrier
>> I want to get into the AI side of the product, obviously with voice prompting the momentum of all the AI, conversational AI to reasoning, and Jensen Huang said at GTC last week at their kind of mini annual conference in DC, the scaling laws around beyond reasoning is deep thinking. Actually, intelligence is coming. But I misspoke when I introduced you, you're Dr. Jenny Shao, an MD. I'll read your resume. Resident physician at Harvard University, Surgical Residency at Mount Sinai Medical School, Cleveland Clinic, Lead Researcher at Boston Children's Hospital, Nobel Prize Laureate Lab researcher.
Jenny Shao
>> Oh my goodness.
John Furrier
>> Executive Editor Journal of Global Health, Student Researcher.
Jenny Shao
>> You went deep.
John Furrier
>> This is just from your LinkedIn. I bring that up because you are very humble and your company motto says, "It's not about pedigree, it's about execution." Your credentials in the area are significant. I can see why you came with the product. You're bringing a lot to bear, even from journaling, running the journal to research, to actually being a resident in the medical field. And so we didn't really dig into in our last interview, you got here because of your journey. And so this is, I won't say off the beaten path. It's kind of in line with your expertise.
Jenny Shao
>> It's a bit unusual.
John Furrier
>> But you can cross that bridge and say, "Okay, I see how you got there." So take me through the mindset, because now technology is accelerating, and whether you're talking about accelerating computing from the Nvidia, Jensen Huang, CEO, or I just talked another author today, the acceleration between how things get done between worlds coming together and converging. You saw something with the AI that was there. Connect the dots for us. Tell us the story,
Jenny Shao
>> For sure. I think this goes back a couple years, but I will say to your point about the compute right now, and then just the scaling of AI, I think in the past couple of years, it's really been about making these bigger and bigger models, sealing compute, and making it more efficient, making it more scalable, and I very much believe that the next wave of AI is not just about that. It's really about how do we make this more human? Not just intelligence in the way that, "Oh, I remember certain things in Encyclopedia." It's about how do we make this emotionally intelligent? How do we make this actually human? And that's where my background comes in, is that I used to be a surgeon before I was a founder. And it was interesting when I said I was going to leave surgery and leave Harvard and this crazy idea of founding a startup as I think a solo founder
John Furrier
>> Everyone thought you lost your mind.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, people were just like, "What is wrong with you?"
John Furrier
>> All that hard work.
Jenny Shao
>> "You're going to go die under a bridge." But I was just very, very, I had a conviction that this is important. I wanted to build a world that we actually wanted to live in. And as a surgeon, you take an oath and a medical school that to do no harm, you vow to do everything that you can't actually help people. And when I realized that our system was not set up to actually help patients, I realized that people were so lonely, they were very disconnected emotionally. People were dying alone in ICUs. And I was just like, "This is insane. This should not be the world that we live in." So I wanted to build a place that was deeply human, that help people really feel seen and really, really come back to themselves as step one, and to connect. The thing is that we call it innovation in Silicon Valley, but this is something that's all as time. It's really in our basic biology that as humans, we need to connect, we need to feel seen. We need a place where we can feel is our safe space where we can express, and that is Robyn is. We wanted to build something where the tech empowers the people. The tech actually empowers us to be more human, to really, really find ourselves and to really take that as a step to connecting with everybody else as well.
John Furrier
>> And I think that's where AI, when you look at the AI, the opportunity, the timing was good because you take that leap of faith, the conviction, as you say, that's what startups are like. You got to take a risk. But I like the risk management because you look at where the AI was at that time, and the advancements just on the prompts aren't one and done. There's a lot more next step thinking. The clusters are getting bigger, but the software's coming in and the use cases in the market are people. You've seen stories, "I'm having an affair with my chatbot." You can have a dialogue and sometimes journaling or talking, in this case, with a programmable agent, it makes a lot of sense. So I completely see the logic and how that would really change someone's life. Take us through the execution on the product side, because what happens? How did you do it? Is it like a secret brain? Are you tapping all these databases? Are you getting some direct feedback from the user? How do you tailor and tune the AI and the technology into the person? And how do you get them to feel and then act? What's the three things? Talk?
Jenny Shao
>> So talk, feel, grow.
John Furrier
>> Talk, feel, grow.
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> So you feel then you grow. So take us through how it works.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah. So that's my favorite question because I think I very much believe that vision without execution is just a day dream, you really have to make it happen. And on the product side, we very much built Robyn like a human brain. We built Robyn to really, really know you. To not just know, "Oh, John, you wore a suit. I want to see you tomorrow.: It's about, "Oh John, these are important to you."
It's about memory, but human evolving memory, right? As humans we remember, but then that also evolves. And then it's colored by salience, by what is emotionally resonant, by what is recent. And all of these things that I learned in Eric and Ella's lab, I then took and pour that into Robyn. So that Robyn now has the most human memory on the market. And it really goes back to our mission of empowering people.
John Furrier
>> What do you mean human memory? Explain that.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah. So for example, AI memory right now is kind of like an encyclopedia.
John Furrier
>> Like tokens.
Jenny Shao
>> So no, it's kind of like an encyclopedia. So think of it as kind of like a big shelf. Every time you say something, you're putting something on that shelf, and then you create that knowledge base and then every single time, it takes these keywords. Excuse me. And then so that memory kind of is like, "If I see you tomorrow." And I'm like, "Oh, John, you had glasses on yesterday."
It's true. It's just not very salient, but Robyn's memory is about, "Oh, John, I remember you mentioned you love surfing. There's a really good surf place. Let's go and surf together." It's about what is important to you. It's about what is recent and what has saliency, what has emotional resonance, and a lot of that is neuroscience. That's not just about the tech stack. It's knowing what to put in that tech stack. It's about how do we make this analogy human?
John Furrier
>> So you make the tech stack work around the design on the outcome versus building a tech stack and look for a solution?
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly. We very much built Robyn as a place to be human. So then the question we asked ourselves was, "What do we put in this tech stack to make that come to life? How do we build the most human AI? How do we build something that makes people feel seen and heard?" Because there's so much talk about efficiency and AI replacing humans. And we don't believe in that. We believe in the future where AI empowers humans to be more authentic and to be more themselves and more connected. And that's the future that I want to build, and that's the future that we're going to work very, very hard to make happen.
John Furrier
>> All right, so you get the launch this week. You got activations I mentioned because you told me before we came on camera. The subways tell us through all the plans. And here in New York City, if you're in New York City, you're riding the subway, we'll see it. Take us through the plans.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, so if you run the subway, you will definitely see our campaign there. So look for a really colorful sunrise poster with Robyn. And even our campaign, we wanted to make it about the person, about the human using it and their experience. Not so much just like the tech, but it's all over the subways. It's in a lot of subway stations. We also have a Times Square billboards. It's going up very excitingly tomorrow. So if you are in Times Square, then you'll also see us, but we're very, very excited about the awareness that we're seeing and just the traction and the excitement forward building.
John Furrier
>> Well, I'm super happy for you because after that last interview, it was a very memorable interview for me because it's not just tech fun, it's like society impact is significant because we all have friends and sometimes ourselves where we've had situations where it's like you need a friend or sometimes something so confidential or private, I could see how AI could assist there. I guess my only question would be, or two questions. When I start using, I can start using the product today, that's a yes.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> And then two, I'd be worried about privacy.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes,
John Furrier
>> Because I'll download it, but then Jane is going to check out my inner thoughts. Robyn has got to be separate from, I'm just saying you, but.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes, yes, that's a very, very-
John Furrier
>> I share my intimacy grow, I'm going to be vulnerable.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes. And that's why one of the first things that we did, it is two things really. It's like safety and privacy. So when we had one user, which was me, I made sure that we implemented safety guardrails on top of guardrails. I remember at the time my dev team was like, "This is crazy. What's the point? No one's using this. You are the only user Jenny."
But I'm like, "No, I don't care." If we have one person, this is live, it has to have this. And that's why we have very robust safety guardrails. And in terms of privacy, everything is encrypted. So nobody at Robyn, including me, I can't just go in and be like, "Oh, what did John say today?" And I made that very purposely because I wouldn't use it if I knew somebody could just read my private thoughts. So we build it very intentionally for the human, and it's because we are the consumers. We built it for ourselves. We built it for younger Jenny, for the people that I took care of who really need this. And what we asked is what do we want to see in this product? And number one was privacy and safety. So that's unlock.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and I think the thing I want to ask next is data sharing because the old model was whether you're a telco, phone company carrier or Facebook, they sell the data.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, we don't do that.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. No. So the data is completely owned by the user.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes. The data is only used to improve the user experience. And nobody at Robyn can just go in and see your data. And we will never sell your data. That is not the kind of company that we are building. That's not how we monetize, and we want to build a place where people and their data are safe.
John Furrier
>> So as you grew from user one, patient zero, some say maybe that's a bad word.
Jenny Shao
>> Not a patient because we're not clinical, but yeah.
John Furrier
>> You've been there, done that. Very active on the floors. Look, it's almost, "Oh, the bell's going to ring very shortly." So my last question for you is, as your user base grows, what did you learn? What's been some of the observations? Obviously you mentioned some testimonials that change people's lives. I can certainly see it doing that, but what's the user patterns? What's the behavior like?
Jenny Shao
>> The biggest, I think surprise, but almost if you think about it's not too surprising that we saw, it's really the use case of Robyn. I think when we first started, we saw some patterns. We saw people talk about dating, they talk about work, talk about their personal lives, but then as we grew and grew, those three are still very prominent. We saw the case, the use case is being human, and that we have everybody from Gen Z users all the way to boomers across all generations. And if you look at everything they're talking about, it's something, it's a very, very deeply human thing to do. They talk about a show that I like. How do I talk to my friend? This person disappointed me, some family drama. And it's like, we only have metadata, right? So we don't know exactly what they're talking about, but we do have data on the topics. And by looking at this, it really shows us that this is something that is about being human.
John Furrier
>> Not to get all nerdy and everything, but if you go to the AI world, you're an AI native app, which is great. On the tech side, the Nvidias of the world, their big language is first token out fast.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Time to first token, which means results. So I can imagine that you have a similar dynamic with the users because talk, feel, grow, talking is the cathartic data sharing. So you have to be optimized for one, responding and responding right or good enough to keep the progression going so that the feeling stage comes in. And then after that, how do you handle the growth? I'm sure you're aggregating responses. Take me through the data modeling. What's the fastest response thinking? Take us through that whole mindset.
Jenny Shao
>> So we've done a lot of work on optimizing our latency, and just like you said, when you're having a human conversation, you don't want to respond too fast and cut them off, but you don't want to respond five seconds.
John Furrier
>> I do that all the time.
Jenny Shao
>> Or five seconds later. So we optimize. And our latency right now is usually around 1.5 seconds, which is a very natural human time to, if we're talking, you'd be like, "Oh, okay." And then you would respond. And then in terms of how Robyn evolves with you, that is one of our core value props is that we are truly built to know you, which means that over time, the more you talk to Robyn, the more it's going to know you. And we very much optimize for minimum input, maximum output. If you use Robyn even three times, it's going to show you something about you that even you were like, "Oh, wow, this is so accurate." We actually get texts from our users saying, "This emotional profile is so accurate. I feel very called out."
John Furrier
>> Can I monitor myself all the time?
Jenny Shao
>> You can always use it. And every single time you use it, Robyn is going to grow with you. So the data is very much built so that every single time you have a conversation-
John Furrier
>> A documentary of my life.
Jenny Shao
>> It learns about you.
John Furrier
>> Writes the books and puts them on-
Jenny Shao
>> You can ask Robyn like who I am, who is John?
John Furrier
>> "That's my boyfriend."
Jenny Shao
>> Right? Yes, exactly. You can actually ask that. Exactly, and-
John Furrier
>> What's the growth? What's my growth mindset score?
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly. And we show things back to you. So instead of just conversing with Robyn, every time you converse with it, the data goes in and it shows you your emotional profile. What are the patterns running you? It shows you what are the key insights from this week that evolve every single week. And they're very accurate, they're not like, "Oh, take a leap." They're very much like, "You mentioned this on Tuesday, here's something you can do." And one of our new features that I'm most excited about is called For You Today, which is like, wouldn't it be nice.
John Furrier
>> Called For You Today?
Jenny Shao
>> For You Today, and the idea is that wouldn't it be nice if you woke up and your biggest problem is solved? That'd be nice. Right? I would love that.
John Furrier
>> I love that.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, and now we have it. So from everything you talked to Robyn, it's like whatever is your top of mind, it's from chaos to clarity. You wake up and then there's clarity and it's like, "Oh, Jenny, you're chatting about launching. Here's the playbook." You mentioned having this conversation that you've been trying to have. Here's a way to do it. Right? And it's all just from talking to Robyn, the chat is the brain, but we wanted to also build the rest of it as well. So the reflections, the insights, all of it, and it all grows with you, which is we're the only thing on the market right now that actually does that because being human, it's a messy but also very beautiful process. And we build tech that honors that instead of isolating it.
John Furrier
>> Well, I'm super excited for you. Check out the app, download in the Apple Store, Robyn with a Y, R-O-B-Y-N A-I. Final question for you before the bell rings and closes today's market out.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> What's on the to-do list now?
Jenny Shao
>> Oh, we have so many things.
John Furrier
>> Next time we get together, what's it?
Jenny Shao
>> We have so many things on the roadmap that it's going to be very fun, but what I can say is that next time we meet, Robyn will have connected and empowered many, many, many more people.
John Furrier
>> Well, thanks so much. Great to see you.
Jenny Shao
>> Thanks, John.
John Furrier
>> Mixture of experts sharing their expertise on theCUBE. We're doing our part to bring that to you. I'm John Furrier, the host. Thanks for watching.
>> Hello, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in theCUBE's NYSE Wired Studio. Of course, we have our Palo Alto Studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. This is our mixture of expert series that we talk to leaders, experts in their field who want to contribute to our index and our community. Jenny Shao is here. She's been a CUBE alumni back. She's also the founder and CEO of Robyn AI, which we've talked about before about almost a year ago here in theCUBE at the NYSE. She's back with lots of momentum, her seed of an idea generated momentum product launch. It's launching this week. Jenny, welcome back to theCUBE here-
Jenny Shao
>> Thanks for having me back....
John Furrier
>> At our NYSE Wired Studio.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, thanks for having me back, always happy to talk with you.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, it's great to see the momentum. When we last spoke here, it was part of our series, AI Leaders. You had an idea how you could change people's lives using AI technology, and it was a really cool session. You were sharing your vision. We were riffing on some of the impacts of society.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes, I remember.
John Furrier
>> How technology could change things. Now you've made it a reality.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> You have funding. You have a product that's out in the market. You're launching a big ad campaign in the subways and billboards. You have momentum and traction and lift with users. Congratulations.
Jenny Shao
>> Thank you. Thank you. We are so excited. Last time we spoke, just like you said, it was very much an idea that we are very passionate and we started building it. And right now, to see Robyn in the hands of everybody, to hear these stories and see our campaign, but most importantly, see the product come to life and everyone who's using it, our community, their stories, it's really, it's entirely why we built Robyn. So it's definitely been an amazing, amazing year, and we're just getting started.
John Furrier
>> So if you search Robyn, R-O-B-Y-N.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Not Robyn with an I, Robyn with a Y, Robyn AI. You can check out the app. Give us an update. I want to get the hard news out there. Products available. Where can I get it? What's the process? How do I use it? What does it do?
Jenny Shao
>> I love it. So you can find us everywhere on the Apple App Store. Currently, we're just iOS, but you search R-O-B-Y-N, we're the first thing on top. It says, Robyn, talk, feel, grow, and then you just download.
John Furrier
>> Talk, feel, grow.
Jenny Shao
>> Talk, feel, grow. Yes. So Robyn talk, feel, grow. You can download it on the app store and then you really just get to using it. And Robyn, we very much built it to be kind of your emotionally intelligent partner, which is something that reflects you back to you and really feels like it really knows you. In my opinion, the best tech is really tech that kind of disappears under the surface. And then all you see is yourself because it's not about the tech per se, it's about the user. It's about the human who's actually using the technology. And I can't wait for everyone to really experience that. We've already been hearing from our community people who have been using Robyn on everything they're using Robyn for, and that's always the favorite part of my day is hearing these stories. We've heard that Robyn helped me save my marriage. Robyn made me a better husband, and Father, Robyn helped me through a divorce. Robyn helped me ask the girl out. So it's really ramping up and I'm so excited to see it live.
John Furrier
>> I want to get into the AI side of the product, obviously with voice prompting the momentum of all the AI, conversational AI to reasoning, and Jensen Huang said at GTC last week at their kind of mini annual conference in DC, the scaling laws around beyond reasoning is deep thinking. Actually, intelligence is coming. But I misspoke when I introduced you, you're Dr. Jenny Shao, an MD. I'll read your resume. Resident physician at Harvard University, Surgical Residency at Mount Sinai Medical School, Cleveland Clinic, Lead Researcher at Boston Children's Hospital, Nobel Prize Laureate Lab researcher.
Jenny Shao
>> Oh my goodness.
John Furrier
>> Executive Editor Journal of Global Health, Student Researcher.
Jenny Shao
>> You went deep.
John Furrier
>> This is just from your LinkedIn. I bring that up because you are very humble and your company motto says, "It's not about pedigree, it's about execution." Your credentials in the area are significant. I can see why you came with the product. You're bringing a lot to bear, even from journaling, running the journal to research, to actually being a resident in the medical field. And so we didn't really dig into in our last interview, you got here because of your journey. And so this is, I won't say off the beaten path. It's kind of in line with your expertise.
Jenny Shao
>> It's a bit unusual.
John Furrier
>> But you can cross that bridge and say, "Okay, I see how you got there." So take me through the mindset, because now technology is accelerating, and whether you're talking about accelerating computing from the Nvidia, Jensen Huang, CEO, or I just talked another author today, the acceleration between how things get done between worlds coming together and converging. You saw something with the AI that was there. Connect the dots for us. Tell us the story,
Jenny Shao
>> For sure. I think this goes back a couple years, but I will say to your point about the compute right now, and then just the scaling of AI, I think in the past couple of years, it's really been about making these bigger and bigger models, sealing compute, and making it more efficient, making it more scalable, and I very much believe that the next wave of AI is not just about that. It's really about how do we make this more human? Not just intelligence in the way that, "Oh, I remember certain things in Encyclopedia." It's about how do we make this emotionally intelligent? How do we make this actually human? And that's where my background comes in, is that I used to be a surgeon before I was a founder. And it was interesting when I said I was going to leave surgery and leave Harvard and this crazy idea of founding a startup as I think a solo founder
John Furrier
>> Everyone thought you lost your mind.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, people were just like, "What is wrong with you?"
John Furrier
>> All that hard work.
Jenny Shao
>> "You're going to go die under a bridge." But I was just very, very, I had a conviction that this is important. I wanted to build a world that we actually wanted to live in. And as a surgeon, you take an oath and a medical school that to do no harm, you vow to do everything that you can't actually help people. And when I realized that our system was not set up to actually help patients, I realized that people were so lonely, they were very disconnected emotionally. People were dying alone in ICUs. And I was just like, "This is insane. This should not be the world that we live in." So I wanted to build a place that was deeply human, that help people really feel seen and really, really come back to themselves as step one, and to connect. The thing is that we call it innovation in Silicon Valley, but this is something that's all as time. It's really in our basic biology that as humans, we need to connect, we need to feel seen. We need a place where we can feel is our safe space where we can express, and that is Robyn is. We wanted to build something where the tech empowers the people. The tech actually empowers us to be more human, to really, really find ourselves and to really take that as a step to connecting with everybody else as well.
John Furrier
>> And I think that's where AI, when you look at the AI, the opportunity, the timing was good because you take that leap of faith, the conviction, as you say, that's what startups are like. You got to take a risk. But I like the risk management because you look at where the AI was at that time, and the advancements just on the prompts aren't one and done. There's a lot more next step thinking. The clusters are getting bigger, but the software's coming in and the use cases in the market are people. You've seen stories, "I'm having an affair with my chatbot." You can have a dialogue and sometimes journaling or talking, in this case, with a programmable agent, it makes a lot of sense. So I completely see the logic and how that would really change someone's life. Take us through the execution on the product side, because what happens? How did you do it? Is it like a secret brain? Are you tapping all these databases? Are you getting some direct feedback from the user? How do you tailor and tune the AI and the technology into the person? And how do you get them to feel and then act? What's the three things? Talk?
Jenny Shao
>> So talk, feel, grow.
John Furrier
>> Talk, feel, grow.
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> So you feel then you grow. So take us through how it works.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah. So that's my favorite question because I think I very much believe that vision without execution is just a day dream, you really have to make it happen. And on the product side, we very much built Robyn like a human brain. We built Robyn to really, really know you. To not just know, "Oh, John, you wore a suit. I want to see you tomorrow.: It's about, "Oh John, these are important to you."
It's about memory, but human evolving memory, right? As humans we remember, but then that also evolves. And then it's colored by salience, by what is emotionally resonant, by what is recent. And all of these things that I learned in Eric and Ella's lab, I then took and pour that into Robyn. So that Robyn now has the most human memory on the market. And it really goes back to our mission of empowering people.
John Furrier
>> What do you mean human memory? Explain that.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah. So for example, AI memory right now is kind of like an encyclopedia.
John Furrier
>> Like tokens.
Jenny Shao
>> So no, it's kind of like an encyclopedia. So think of it as kind of like a big shelf. Every time you say something, you're putting something on that shelf, and then you create that knowledge base and then every single time, it takes these keywords. Excuse me. And then so that memory kind of is like, "If I see you tomorrow." And I'm like, "Oh, John, you had glasses on yesterday."
It's true. It's just not very salient, but Robyn's memory is about, "Oh, John, I remember you mentioned you love surfing. There's a really good surf place. Let's go and surf together." It's about what is important to you. It's about what is recent and what has saliency, what has emotional resonance, and a lot of that is neuroscience. That's not just about the tech stack. It's knowing what to put in that tech stack. It's about how do we make this analogy human?
John Furrier
>> So you make the tech stack work around the design on the outcome versus building a tech stack and look for a solution?
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly. We very much built Robyn as a place to be human. So then the question we asked ourselves was, "What do we put in this tech stack to make that come to life? How do we build the most human AI? How do we build something that makes people feel seen and heard?" Because there's so much talk about efficiency and AI replacing humans. And we don't believe in that. We believe in the future where AI empowers humans to be more authentic and to be more themselves and more connected. And that's the future that I want to build, and that's the future that we're going to work very, very hard to make happen.
John Furrier
>> All right, so you get the launch this week. You got activations I mentioned because you told me before we came on camera. The subways tell us through all the plans. And here in New York City, if you're in New York City, you're riding the subway, we'll see it. Take us through the plans.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, so if you run the subway, you will definitely see our campaign there. So look for a really colorful sunrise poster with Robyn. And even our campaign, we wanted to make it about the person, about the human using it and their experience. Not so much just like the tech, but it's all over the subways. It's in a lot of subway stations. We also have a Times Square billboards. It's going up very excitingly tomorrow. So if you are in Times Square, then you'll also see us, but we're very, very excited about the awareness that we're seeing and just the traction and the excitement forward building.
John Furrier
>> Well, I'm super happy for you because after that last interview, it was a very memorable interview for me because it's not just tech fun, it's like society impact is significant because we all have friends and sometimes ourselves where we've had situations where it's like you need a friend or sometimes something so confidential or private, I could see how AI could assist there. I guess my only question would be, or two questions. When I start using, I can start using the product today, that's a yes.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> And then two, I'd be worried about privacy.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes,
John Furrier
>> Because I'll download it, but then Jane is going to check out my inner thoughts. Robyn has got to be separate from, I'm just saying you, but.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes, yes, that's a very, very-
John Furrier
>> I share my intimacy grow, I'm going to be vulnerable.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes. And that's why one of the first things that we did, it is two things really. It's like safety and privacy. So when we had one user, which was me, I made sure that we implemented safety guardrails on top of guardrails. I remember at the time my dev team was like, "This is crazy. What's the point? No one's using this. You are the only user Jenny."
But I'm like, "No, I don't care." If we have one person, this is live, it has to have this. And that's why we have very robust safety guardrails. And in terms of privacy, everything is encrypted. So nobody at Robyn, including me, I can't just go in and be like, "Oh, what did John say today?" And I made that very purposely because I wouldn't use it if I knew somebody could just read my private thoughts. So we build it very intentionally for the human, and it's because we are the consumers. We built it for ourselves. We built it for younger Jenny, for the people that I took care of who really need this. And what we asked is what do we want to see in this product? And number one was privacy and safety. So that's unlock.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and I think the thing I want to ask next is data sharing because the old model was whether you're a telco, phone company carrier or Facebook, they sell the data.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, we don't do that.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. No. So the data is completely owned by the user.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes. The data is only used to improve the user experience. And nobody at Robyn can just go in and see your data. And we will never sell your data. That is not the kind of company that we are building. That's not how we monetize, and we want to build a place where people and their data are safe.
John Furrier
>> So as you grew from user one, patient zero, some say maybe that's a bad word.
Jenny Shao
>> Not a patient because we're not clinical, but yeah.
John Furrier
>> You've been there, done that. Very active on the floors. Look, it's almost, "Oh, the bell's going to ring very shortly." So my last question for you is, as your user base grows, what did you learn? What's been some of the observations? Obviously you mentioned some testimonials that change people's lives. I can certainly see it doing that, but what's the user patterns? What's the behavior like?
Jenny Shao
>> The biggest, I think surprise, but almost if you think about it's not too surprising that we saw, it's really the use case of Robyn. I think when we first started, we saw some patterns. We saw people talk about dating, they talk about work, talk about their personal lives, but then as we grew and grew, those three are still very prominent. We saw the case, the use case is being human, and that we have everybody from Gen Z users all the way to boomers across all generations. And if you look at everything they're talking about, it's something, it's a very, very deeply human thing to do. They talk about a show that I like. How do I talk to my friend? This person disappointed me, some family drama. And it's like, we only have metadata, right? So we don't know exactly what they're talking about, but we do have data on the topics. And by looking at this, it really shows us that this is something that is about being human.
John Furrier
>> Not to get all nerdy and everything, but if you go to the AI world, you're an AI native app, which is great. On the tech side, the Nvidias of the world, their big language is first token out fast.
Jenny Shao
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Time to first token, which means results. So I can imagine that you have a similar dynamic with the users because talk, feel, grow, talking is the cathartic data sharing. So you have to be optimized for one, responding and responding right or good enough to keep the progression going so that the feeling stage comes in. And then after that, how do you handle the growth? I'm sure you're aggregating responses. Take me through the data modeling. What's the fastest response thinking? Take us through that whole mindset.
Jenny Shao
>> So we've done a lot of work on optimizing our latency, and just like you said, when you're having a human conversation, you don't want to respond too fast and cut them off, but you don't want to respond five seconds.
John Furrier
>> I do that all the time.
Jenny Shao
>> Or five seconds later. So we optimize. And our latency right now is usually around 1.5 seconds, which is a very natural human time to, if we're talking, you'd be like, "Oh, okay." And then you would respond. And then in terms of how Robyn evolves with you, that is one of our core value props is that we are truly built to know you, which means that over time, the more you talk to Robyn, the more it's going to know you. And we very much optimize for minimum input, maximum output. If you use Robyn even three times, it's going to show you something about you that even you were like, "Oh, wow, this is so accurate." We actually get texts from our users saying, "This emotional profile is so accurate. I feel very called out."
John Furrier
>> Can I monitor myself all the time?
Jenny Shao
>> You can always use it. And every single time you use it, Robyn is going to grow with you. So the data is very much built so that every single time you have a conversation-
John Furrier
>> A documentary of my life.
Jenny Shao
>> It learns about you.
John Furrier
>> Writes the books and puts them on-
Jenny Shao
>> You can ask Robyn like who I am, who is John?
John Furrier
>> "That's my boyfriend."
Jenny Shao
>> Right? Yes, exactly. You can actually ask that. Exactly, and-
John Furrier
>> What's the growth? What's my growth mindset score?
Jenny Shao
>> Exactly. And we show things back to you. So instead of just conversing with Robyn, every time you converse with it, the data goes in and it shows you your emotional profile. What are the patterns running you? It shows you what are the key insights from this week that evolve every single week. And they're very accurate, they're not like, "Oh, take a leap." They're very much like, "You mentioned this on Tuesday, here's something you can do." And one of our new features that I'm most excited about is called For You Today, which is like, wouldn't it be nice.
John Furrier
>> Called For You Today?
Jenny Shao
>> For You Today, and the idea is that wouldn't it be nice if you woke up and your biggest problem is solved? That'd be nice. Right? I would love that.
John Furrier
>> I love that.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah, and now we have it. So from everything you talked to Robyn, it's like whatever is your top of mind, it's from chaos to clarity. You wake up and then there's clarity and it's like, "Oh, Jenny, you're chatting about launching. Here's the playbook." You mentioned having this conversation that you've been trying to have. Here's a way to do it. Right? And it's all just from talking to Robyn, the chat is the brain, but we wanted to also build the rest of it as well. So the reflections, the insights, all of it, and it all grows with you, which is we're the only thing on the market right now that actually does that because being human, it's a messy but also very beautiful process. And we build tech that honors that instead of isolating it.
John Furrier
>> Well, I'm super excited for you. Check out the app, download in the Apple Store, Robyn with a Y, R-O-B-Y-N A-I. Final question for you before the bell rings and closes today's market out.
Jenny Shao
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> What's on the to-do list now?
Jenny Shao
>> Oh, we have so many things.
John Furrier
>> Next time we get together, what's it?
Jenny Shao
>> We have so many things on the roadmap that it's going to be very fun, but what I can say is that next time we meet, Robyn will have connected and empowered many, many, many more people.
John Furrier
>> Well, thanks so much. Great to see you.
Jenny Shao
>> Thanks, John.
John Furrier
>> Mixture of experts sharing their expertise on theCUBE. We're doing our part to bring that to you. I'm John Furrier, the host. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier