Tech
Gusto’s head of technology says hiring an army of specialists is the wrong approach to AI
As founders plan for an increasingly AI-centric future, Gusto co-founder and head of technology Edward Kim said that cutting existing teams and hiring a bunch of specially trained AI engineers is “the wrong way to go.”
Instead, he argued that nontechnical team members can “actually have a much deeper understanding than an average engineer on what situations the customer can get themselves into, what they’re confused about,” putting them in a better position to guide the features that should be built into AI tools.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Kim — whose payroll startup generated more than $500 million in annual revenue in the fiscal year that ended in April 2023 — outlined Gusto’s approach to AI, with nontechnical members of its customer experience team writing “recipes” that guide the way its AI assistant Gus (announced last month) interacts with customers.
Kim also said that the company is seeing that “people who are not software engineers, but a little technically minded, are able to build really powerful and game-changing AI applications,” such as CoPilot — a customer experience tool that was rolled out to the Gusto CX team in June and is already seeing between 2,000 and 3,000 interactions per day.
“We can actually upskill a lot of our people here at Gusto to help them build AI applications,” Kim said.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Is Gus the first big AI product that you’ve released to your customers?
Gus is the big AI functionality that we launched to our customers, and in many ways ties together a lot of the point functionality that we’ve built. Because what you start to see happen in apps is they get littered with AI buttons that are, like, “Press this button to do something with AI.” Ours was, “Press this button so we can generate a job description for you.”
But Gus allows you to remove all of that, and when we feel Gus can do something that is of value to you, Gus can in an unobtrusive way pop up and say, “Hey, can I help you write a job description?” It’s a much cleaner way to interface with AI.
There are some companies that say they’ve been doing AI for a million years but didn’t get attention until now, and others that say they only realized the opportunity in the last couple years. Does Gusto fall in one camp or the other?
The big change for me is, when you talk about software programming, for most people, it’s not accessible. You have to learn how to code, go to school for many years. Machine learning was even more inaccessible. Because you have to be a very special type of software engineer and have this data science skill set and know how to create artificial neural networks and things like that.
The main thing that changed recently is that the interface to create ML and AI applications [has become] much more accessible to anybody. Whereas in the past, we’ve had to learn the language of computers and go to school for that; now computers are learning to understand humans more. And that seems like not that big of a deal, but if you think about it, it just makes building software applications so much more accessible.
That’s exactly what we’ve seen at Gusto: People who are not software engineers, but a little technically minded, are able to build really powerful and game-changing AI applications. We’re actually using a lot of our support team to extend the capabilities of Gus, and they don’t know how to program at all. It’s just that the interface that they use now allows them to do the same thing that software engineers have always done, without needing to learn how to code. If you want, I could talk through one example of each of those.
That’d be great.
There’s this one individual who’s been at the company for about five years. His name is Eric Rodriguez, and he actually joined the customer support team [and then] transferred into our IT team. While he was on that team, he started to get pretty interested in AI, and his boss came up to me and was like, “Hey, he built this thing. I want you to see it.” My first time meeting him in person, he showed me what he had built, which was essentially a CoPilot tool for our [customer experience] team, where you could ask it a question, and it will just give you the answer in natural language. Just like ChatGPT might, except it has access to our internal knowledge base of how to do things in our app.
At this point, we show this to our support team, and they loved it. It completely changed their workflows and how efficient they are. Basically, anytime they get a support ticket, instead of going through this knowledge base that we’ve built, they actually ask this CoPilot tool, and the CoPilot tool actually answers the question for them. There’s still a human in between the CoPilot and the customer, but a lot of times they’re able to just get the response from the CoPilot tool and then copy paste it to the customer. They verify that it’s accurate, which most of the time it is.
We immediately transferred [Eric] to the software engineering team. He actually reports directly to me, believe it or not, and he’s one of our best engineers now. Because he was one of the early adopters of just playing around with AI and now he’s on the forefront of building AI applications at Gusto.
Not everyone is technically minded like Eric, but we have found a way at Gusto to leverage the domain knowledge expertise of nontechnical folks in the company, especially in our customer support team, to help us build more powerful AI applications, and in particular, enable Gus to do more and more things.
Anytime the customer support team gets a support ticket — in other words, one of our customers reaches out to us because they want our support team’s help on something — and if it comes up repeatedly, we actually have the customer support team write a recipe for Gus, meaning that they can actually teach Gus without any technical ability. They can teach Gus to walk that customer through that problem, and sometimes even take action.
We’ve built an internal interface, an internal facing tool, where you can write instructions in natural language to Gus on how to handle a case like that. And there’s actually a no-code way for our support team to be able to tell Gus to call a certain API to accomplish a task.
There’s a lot of conversation out there right now that’s like, “We are going to eliminate all these jobs in this one area and we’re hiring these AI specialists that we’re paying millions of dollars because they have this unique skill set.” And I just think that’s the wrong way to go about doing it. Because the people who are going to be able to progress your AI applications are actually the ones that have the domain expertise of that area, even though they may not have the technical expertise. We can actually upskill a lot of our people here at Gusto to help them build AI applications.
The scary AI scenario is this top-down thing where executives are saying, “We need to use AI” and it’s disconnected from the reality of how people work. It sounds like this is more bottoms up, where you’ve built tools to allow teams to tell you what AI can do for them.
Exactly. In fact, the nontechnical folks that are closer to the customers, they talk to them every single day, they actually have a much deeper understanding than an average engineer on what situations the customer can get themselves into, what they’re confused about. So they are actually in a better position than engineers or AI scientists to write the instructions to Gus to solve that problem.
I think other people I’ve talked to have noticed the same thing. The best AI engineers are actually the people that are the domain experts that have learned how to write good prompts.
As you think about how this plays out over the next few years, do you think the company’s headcount across different teams is going to look pretty similar, or do you think that’ll change over time as AI is deployed across the company?
I think the role does evolve a little bit. I think you’ll see a lot of our CX folks not directly answering questions, but actually writing recipes and doing things like prompt tuning to improve the AI. Everyone’s going to just move up the abstraction layer, and then obviously it will bring more efficiencies to the company and also better customer experience, because they’ll get their questions answered immediately.
And that unlocks Gusto to do more things for our customers. There’s a huge roadmap of things that we want to be doing, but we can’t because we’re constrained in resources.
Tech
Volkswagen’s cheapest EV ever is the first to use Rivian software
Volkswagen’s ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 — a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday — will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model.
The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker’s new of category electric urban front-wheel drive cars that are being developing under the so-called “Brand Group Core” that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market.
The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian’s vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW’s software unit Cariad.
VW didn’t name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grünitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for Technical Development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a “fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture.”
“This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle,” he said. “Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs.”
Sources who didn’t want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed to TechCrunch that Rivian’s software will be in the ID EVERY1 EV. TechCrunch has reached out to Rivian and VW and will update the article if the companies respond.
The new joint venture provides Rivian with a needed influx of cash and the opportunity to diversify its business. Meanwhile, VW Group gains a next-generation electrical architecture and software for EVs that will help it better compete. Both companies have said that the joint venture, called Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, will reduce development costs and help scale new technologies more quickly.
The joint venture is a 50-50 partnership with co-CEOs. Rivian’s head of software, Wassym Bensaid, and Volkswagen Group’s chief technical engineer, Carsten Helbing, will lead the joint venture. The team will be based initially in Palo Alto, California. Three other sites are in development in North America and Europe, the companies have previously said.
“The ID. EVERY1 represents the last piece of the puzzle on our way to the widest model selection in the volume segment,” Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand and Head of the Brand Group Core, said in a statement. “We will then offer every customer the right car with the right drive system–including affordable all-electric entry-level mobility. Our goal is to be the world’s technologically leading high-volume manufacturer by 2030. And as a brand for everyone–just as you would expect from Volkswagen.”
The Volkswagen ID EVERY1 is just a concept for now — and with only a few details attached to the unveiling. The concept vehicle reaches a top speed of 130 km/h (80 miles per hour) and is powered by a newly developed electric drive motor with 70 kW, according to Volkswagen. The German automaker said the range on the EVERY1 will be at least 250 kilometers (150 miles). The vehicle is small but larger than VW’s former UP! vehicle. The company said it will have enough space for four people and a luggage compartment volume of 305 liters.
Tech
The hottest AI models, what they do, and how to use them
AI models are being cranked out at a dizzying pace, by everyone from Big Tech companies like Google to startups like OpenAI and Anthropic. Keeping track of the latest ones can be overwhelming.
Adding to the confusion is that AI models are often promoted based on industry benchmarks. But these technical metrics often reveal little about how real people and companies actually use them.
To cut through the noise, TechCrunch has compiled an overview of the most advanced AI models released since 2024, with details on how to use them and what they’re best for. We’ll keep this list updated with the latest launches, too.
There are literally over a million AI models out there: Hugging Face, for example, hosts over 1.4 million. So this list might miss some models that perform better, in one way or another.
AI models released in 2025
Cohere’s Aya Vision
Cohere released a multimodal model called Aya Vision that it claims is best in class at doing things like captioning images and answering questions about photos. It also excels in languages other than English, unlike other models, Cohere claims. It is available for free on WhatsApp.
OpenAI’s GPT 4.5 ‘Orion’
OpenAI calls Orion their largest model to date, touting its strong “world knowledge” and “emotional intelligence.” However, it underperforms on certain benchmarks compared to newer reasoning models. Orion is available to subscribers of OpenAI’s $200 a month plan.
Claude Sonnet 3.7
Anthropic says this is the industry’s first ‘hybrid’ reasoning model, because it can both fire off quick answers and really think things through when needed. It also gives users control over how long the model can think for, per Anthropic. Sonnet 3.7 is available to all Claude users, but heavier users will need a $20 a month Pro plan.
xAI’s Grok 3
Grok 3 is the latest flagship model from Elon Musk-founded startup xAI. It’s claimed to outperform other leading models on math, science, and coding. The model requires X Premium (which is $50 a month.) After one study found Grok 2 leaned left, Musk pledged to shift Grok more “politically neutral” but it’s not yet clear if that’s been achieved.
OpenAI o3-mini
This is OpenAI’s latest reasoning model and is optimized for STEM-related tasks like coding, math, and science. It’s not OpenAI’s most powerful model but because it’s smaller, the company says it’s significantly lower cost. It is available for free but requires a subscription for heavy users.
OpenAI Deep Research
OpenAI’s Deep Research is designed for doing in-depth research on a topic with clear citations. This service is only available with ChatGPT’s $200 per month Pro subscription. OpenAI recommends it for everything from science to shopping research, but beware that hallucinations remain a problem for AI.
Mistral Le Chat
Mistral has launched app versions of Le Chat, a multimodal AI personal assistant. Mistral claims Le Chat responds faster than any other chatbot. It also has a paid version with up-to-date journalism from the AFP. Tests from Le Monde found Le Chat’s performance impressive, although it made more errors than ChatGPT.
OpenAI Operator
OpenAI’s Operator is meant to be a personal intern that can do things independently, like help you buy groceries. It requires a $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription. AI agents hold a lot of promise, but they’re still experimental: a Washington Post reviewer says Operator decided on its own to order a dozen eggs for $31, paid with the reviewer’s credit card.
Google Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental
Google Gemini’s much-awaited flagship model says it excels at coding and understanding general knowledge. It also has a super-long context window of 2 million tokens, helping users who need to quickly process massive chunks of text. The service requires (at minimum) a Google One AI Premium subscription of $19.99 a month.
AI models released in 2024
DeepSeek R1
This Chinese AI model took Silicon Valley by storm. DeepSeek’s R1 performs well on coding and math, while its open source nature means anyone can run it locally. Plus, it’s free. However, R1 integrates Chinese government censorship and faces rising bans for potentially sending user data back to China.
Gemini Deep Research
Deep Research summarizes Google’s search results in a simple and well-cited document. The service is helpful for students and anyone else who needs a quick research summary. However, its quality isn’t nearly as good as an actual peer-reviewed paper. Deep Research requires a $19.99 Google One AI Premium subscription.
Meta Llama 3.3 70B
This is the newest and most advanced version of Meta’s open source Llama AI models. Meta has touted this version as its cheapest and most efficient yet, especially for math, general knowledge, and instruction following. It is free and open source.
OpenAI Sora
Sora is a model that creates realistic videos based on text. While it can generate entire scenes rather than just clips, OpenAI admits that it often generates “unrealistic physics.” It’s currently only available on paid versions of ChatGPT, starting with Plus, which is $20 a month.
Alibaba Qwen QwQ-32B-Preview
This model is one of the few to rival OpenAI’s o1 on certain industry benchmarks, excelling in math and coding. Ironically for a “reasoning model,” it has “room for improvement in common sense reasoning,” Alibaba says. It also incorporates Chinese government censorship, TechCrunch testing shows. It’s free and open source.
Anthropic’s Computer Use
Claude’s Computer Use is meant to take control of your computer to complete tasks like coding or booking a plane ticket, making it a predecessor of OpenAI’s Operator. Computer use, however, remains in beta. Pricing is via API: $0.80 per million tokens of input and $4 per million tokens of output.
x.AI’s Grok 2
Elon Musk’s AI company, x.AI, has launched an enhanced version of its flagship Grok 2 chatbot it claims is “three times faster.” Free users are limited to 10 questions every two hours on Grok, while subscribers to X’s Premium and Premium+ plans enjoy higher usage limits. x.AI also launched an image generator, Aurora, that produces highly photorealistic images, including some graphic or violent content.
OpenAI o1
OpenAI’s o1 family is meant to produce better answers by “thinking” through responses through a hidden reasoning feature. The model excels at coding, math, and safety, OpenAI claims, but has issues deceiving humans, too. Using o1 requires subscribing to ChatGPT Plus, which is $20 a month.
Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5
Claude Sonnet 3.5 is a model Anthropic claims as being best in class. It’s become known for its coding capabilities and is considered a tech insider’s chatbot of choice. The model can be accessed for free on Claude although heavy users will need a $20 monthly Pro subscription. While it can understand images, it can’t generate them.
OpenAI GPT 4o-mini
OpenAI has touted GPT 4o-mini as its most affordable and fastest model yet thanks to its small size. It’s meant to enable a broad range of tasks like powering customer service chatbots. The model is available on ChatGPT’s free tier. It’s better suited for high-volume simple tasks compared to more complex ones.
Cohere Command R+
Cohere’s Command R+ model excels at complex Retrieval-Augmented Generation (or RAG) applications for enterprises. That means it can find and cite specific pieces of information really well. (The inventor of RAG actually works at Cohere.) Still, RAG doesn’t fully solve AI’s hallucination problem.
Tech
Not all cancer patients need chemo. Ataraxis AI raised $20M to fix that.
Artificial intelligence is a big trend in cancer care, and it’s mostly focused detecting cancer at the earliest possible stage. That makes a lot of sense, given that cancer is less deadly the earlier it’s detected.
But fewer are asking another fundamental question: if someone does have cancer, is an aggressive treatment like chemotherapy necessary? That’s the problem Ataraxis AI is trying to solve.
The New York-based startup is focused on using AI to accurately predict not only if a patient has cancer, but also what their cancer outcome looks like in 5 to 10 years. If there’s only a small chance of the cancer coming back, chemo can be avoided altogether – saving a lot of money, while avoiding the treatment’s notorious side effects.
Ataraxis AI now plans to launch their first commercial test, for breast cancer, to U.S. oncologists in the coming months, its co-founder Jan Witowski tells TechCrunch. To bolster the launch and expand into other types of cancer, the startup has raised a $20.4 million Series A, it told TechCrunch exclusively.
The round was led by AIX Ventures with participation from Thiel Bio, Founders Fund, Floating Point, Bertelsmann, and existing investors Giant Ventures and Obvious Ventures. Ataraxis emerged from stealth last year with a $4 million seed round.
Ataraxis was co-founded by Witowski and Krzysztof Geras, an assistant professor at NYU’s medical school who focuses on AI.
Ataraxis’ tech is powered by an AI model that extracts information from high-resolution images of cancer cells. The model is trained on hundreds of millions of real images from thousands of patients, Witowski said. A recent study showed Ataraxis’ tech was 30% more accurate than the current standard of care for breast cancer, per Ataraxis.
Long term, Ataraxis has big ambitions. It wants its tests to impact at least half of new cancer cases by 2030. It also views itself as a frontier AI company that builds its own models, touting Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun as an AI advisor.
“I think at Ataraxis we are trying to build what is essentially an AI frontier lab, but for healthcare applications,” Witowski said. “Because so many of those problems require a very novel technology.”
The AI boom has led to a rush of fundraises for cancer care startups. Valar Labs raised $22 million to help patients figure out their treatment plan in May 2024, for example. There’s also a bevvy of AI-powered drug discovery firms in the cancer space, like Manas AI which raised $24.6 million in January 2025 and was co-founded by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder.
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