TELUS International, rebranding to TELUS Digital Experience later in the third quarter, has recruited two seasoned artificial intelligence (AI) and Software as a Service (SaaS) industry professionals to its Fuel iX leadership team. The strategic hires of Bret Kinsella as General Manager and Tim MacGregor as Vice President of Business Development, underscore the company’s commitment to ongoing innovation and excellence in designing, building and delivering AI-powered customer experiences for its clients.
TELUS International announced the beta release of Fuel iX, the proprietary, enterprise-grade GenAI engine, in April 2024, launching two main solution areas: Fuel iX Core and Fuel iX Apps.
Fuel iX Core serves as a foundational integration and administration platform for enterprise AI. It provides a suite of features and connectors for observation, arbitration, orchestration, moderation and heightened security. Fuel iX Apps delivers templates for GenAI applications tailored for customer and employee experiences, supports third-party applications, integrates application channels, and more. Most recently, Fuel iX Core powered the first GenAI customer support chatbot to receive international Privacy by Design certification (ISO 31700-1), which was developed by a leading Canadian technology and telecommunications company.
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“Generative AI represents a once-in-a-generation technology platform shift, and Fuel iX is a product designed to help enterprises make that transition to a new set of capabilities,” said Tobias Dengel, President of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company. “Working with our software development, data science and data engineering teams, I’m excited to see how Bret and Tim’s leadership will accelerate enterprise adoption, management and optimization of generative AI capabilities that provide outsized value for our clients.”
In his role as General Manager of Fuel iX, Bret will oversee and drive strategy, design, engineering, marketing, sales and operations. He is the founder of Voicebot.ai, a leading news and research publication focused on transformational AI technologies that has published more than 5,000 articles and a number of landmark reports on AI adoption, and produced nearly 400 podcasts. He also authors the popular generative AI daily newsletter Synthedia. As an award-winning AI analyst, his articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, USA Today, WIRED and VentureBeat. Earlier in his career, Kinsella held Chief Marketing Officer positions for several AI and enterprise SaaS software companies and was a practice leader at Accenture and Sapient. He is a graduate of UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
As Vice President of Business Development for Fuel iX, Tim will lead sales and account management, focusing on expanding the existing customer base and adding new clients to the platform. Prior to joining TELUS International, he served on the senior management team overseeing product at Clearleap, a SaaS video distribution and streaming management solution, helping guide its sale to IBM. Post-acquisition, MacGregor worked to integrate AI and machine learning into IBM’s media client workflows, providing automated sports highlight clippings for major sports brands and video metadata enrichment to enhance customer experience and monetization. His contributions improved streaming experiences for tens of millions of viewers and facilitated thousands of hours of streamed content. Most recently, Tim was Vice President of product strategy at Telestream. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Wesleyan University.
In addition, Sho Modica, Data & AI partner, is leading product strategy and development for Fuel iX, and Justin Watts, a Distinguished Engineer at TELUS, is providing technical leadership.
“Fuel iX immediately stood out as a unique opportunity to fill a gap in the generative AI market,” said Bret Kinsella, General Manager of Fuel iX. “While most generative AI solutions are treated today as individual applications, enterprises are recognizing they cannot adequately manage dozens of these separately. Fuel iX Core serves as a control plane for generative AI in the enterprise, offering integration, administration, observation and other essential services. Coupled with Fuel iX Apps, which enables accelerated GenAI application development tailored for enterprise needs, our clients can now take advantage of centralization, standardization, control and flexibility across cloud and model providers. That is the unique value that Fuel iX brings to the table, and what enterprise leaders need right now.”
SOURCE: BusinessWire