Daniel Wagner CEO of Rezolve Ai was interviewed by the journalist Franz Wild, Editor in Chief of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)
Al is transforming the way customers experience commerce, from retail aisles to hospitality services. This conversation digs into both the promise and the perils of Al in shaping these interactions, highlighting the opportunities and challenges it brings. Join this session to hear how businesses can harness the power of Al to revolutionise commerce.
Watch the fireside here:
Transcript of the session
FW: Welcome Dan. Glad you could make it. You might not know, but Dan is rushing from the airport, and was held up by the fact that customs was taking a short coffee break. But we won’t dally, really great honor to sit here with you, Dan.
Dan is CEO of Rezolve Ai. More interestingly even, Dan has been a tech entrepreneur since 1984. I won’t tell you how old I was then, but I was born. I think you were probably in your early 20s. But just to tell people who don’t know you, you’re sitting on top of a company that’s worth 1.2 billion on the NASDAQ today, I think. But you’ve been doing this for 40 years. Just give people who may be a bit newer to the tech craze a little bit of an overview of your journey.
DW: Okay, thank you. Thank you everybody. It’s a great pleasure to be here. Great honor to be here. So I started my career, as you heard, in 1984. I started the first commercial online information platform. This was five years before Tim Berners-Lee presented the concept to the World Wide Web at CERN and eight years before we started using WWW. So I was very early in that process. And as a result of being early, I was fortunate enough to carve out a market leadership position over the next 16 years. So the company that I founded became the world leader in online information between 84 and 2000 when I sold it to Thomson Reuters.
I set up a couple of companies subsequent to that. In 1998, I set up a company called Venda, which was a cloud-based commerce platform that went on to become European market leader for enterprise e-commerce. And I sold that to Oracle in 2014. And I set up another company, a search company in 2003, which listed on the London stock market in 2014 and then was sold to private equity in 2019. And this was before I started Rezolve in 2016.
FW: So this is all before the year 2000?
DW: Well, no. then Attraqt in 2003,
FW: But tell me about the dot-com bubble because that also hit you, didn’t it?
DW: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you’re in internet and ecommerce in the late 90s, early noughties, you were going to be hit like everybody else. And I was running a NASDAQ listed and a London stock exchange listed company. So we got hit like everybody else.
But you know, I think everybody involved in that sector understood the important transformational nature of ecommerce and internet that we all now enjoy and live on through our mobile phones and our devices every single minute of every day.
FW: And let’s talk about Rezolve a bit because you are essentially an AI services company.
DW: Much more exciting than that. Much more exciting. A lot more exciting than AI services.
FW: I feel a bit lost here at Web Summit. There’s so many amazing companies, but what makes you stand out?
DW: So this is one of the most exciting, well, this is the most exciting business I’ve created in my career. Always have to wait until the end for the most exciting things to happen in life.
FW: So this is the end yet, Dan?
DW: Not yet!
But what we’re building, what we built at Rezolve is quite extraordinary. Many of you in the audience will be familiar with the idea that generative AI has hallucinations and problems associated with the probability of results not being accurate. And we set out to solve that problem in 2016.
I think we identified that probabilistic algorithms would make mistakes. And so we wanted to address that prior to delivering a solution that can be used in e-commerce really and search. And that’s really my background, as you just heard. And so we spent many, many years devising processes and strategies and have patented those processes and strategies that we believe solve hallucinations with a single objective to address what we believe is a big problem in e-commerce. Because I believe that e-commerce that we use today is end of life, it’s finished.
We’ve had 20, 30, 40 years of that experience and it’s a bad experience. And that bad experience is exemplified by seven out of 10 people not checking out on digital platforms when you compare that to physical retail, seven out of 10 people who walk into a store do buy a product. So you’ve got 100% converse relationship between digital channels and physical channels. And a lot of people have been worrying about scratching their heads over this for decades.
Is it to do with asking for registration? Is it to do with not surfacing shipping prices up early? Is it to do with the four pages of hell, the checkout flow? But those things have largely been addressed with Stripe, with Google Pay and Apple Pay and things like this. And we’re still seeing 70% attrition.
So I think we know what the problem is. We think we know what the problem is. We think that we know how to solve that problem. And I believe that the problem is a lack of information for the buyer. So let me give you an example. If my wife was asked to buy me a mobile phone, she couldn’t do it online because she doesn’t know what a megapixel is, she doesn’t know what iOS is, she doesn’t know what Android is, she doesn’t know what a megabyte is, she doesn’t know what an OLED screen is. And if she’s looking at a website for mobile phones
FW: Is she watching this? No, she’s gonna, no, thank God.
DW: If she went to a website to buy a mobile phone, that’s how they’re presented to her. And so she wouldn’t know how to buy it. But if she walked into the Telefonica store, if that’s the right mobile operator here, well, take a chance. She went into the Telefonica store here in Lisbon, and she said, “I need to buy my husband a mobile phone.” The salesman would ask her one or two questions. He or she would say, “Does he use a PC or a Mac? “Does he take a lot of pictures? “Does he need a long battery life?” One or two questions, “Does he want a high-end phone? “Does he want a cost-efficient phone?” And then that person would present two or three phones, and she would likely be able to buy me a phone. So what we try to do at Rezolve is replicate the best salesman of the planet, representing a store in a Gen AI format. And we obviously had to solve the problem of hallucinations to do that. So maybe the best thing to do is to illustrate it to you now by showing you a demo, if that’s okay.
FW: Yeah, please, go for it.
<Dan presenting the Demo on stage for the first time>
DW: I’m gonna call a number and see if this works.
‘Hi, this is Julia. Welcome to Rezolve Hotel. A luxury property is a heart of New York, how can I help you?’
DW: I’m thinking of coming to New York, December 15, staying for three nights. Do you have any rooms?
‘Could you please tell me how many guests will be staying with us?’
DW: It’ll just be me.
‘We have the following rooms available for your stay from December 15 to December 18, 2025.
One, Palace Retreat Two, Corner Suite Three, Plastic Roof. Would you like more information on any of these room options?
DW: Actually, I’d like to ask you a question. I like to take a long walk in the morning when I’m on business trips, and I understand that Central Park is really lovely at this time of year. Is the hotel located near the Central Park?
‘Yes, Rezolve Hotel is located conveniently near Central Park, making it an ideal spot for your morning walk. Central Park is especially beautiful this time of year, offering a peaceful retreat in the midst of the city. Would you like information on local attractions or ways to get to Central Park from the hotel?
DW: Now I’m gonna ask you another question. I always bring my little doggy with me when I go on vacation or when I go on business. Can I bring my little doggy to the hotel room?
‘Yes, you can bring your small dog to Rezolve Hotel. The hotel welcomes small dogs up to 25 pounds. A pet waiver and a 250 to non-refundable cleaning seat are required at check-in. Pets are not allowed in the hotel’s public areas. And must be kept in a caged carrying case and moving around the hotel. Pets cannot be left unattended in guest rooms. Would you like any assistance arranging pets sitting or dog walking services during your stay?’
DW: No, thanks, I’m ready to check out now.
‘Thank you for choosing us. We look forward to welcoming you.’
DW: Can you suggest a room for me, please?
‘For your stay, I suggest the following group options. One, as palace retreat.’
DW: I’ll take the palace retreat.
‘Could you please provide your full name for the booking?
DW: Dan Wagner.
‘Please provide your phone number to complete the booking process.(…) 917-628-4747.
Just to confirm, you want to book a palace retreat for one guest from December 15th to December 18th, 2025 under the name Dan Wagner. Is that correct?
DW: Yes, it is.
‘Let me book the room for you and send a payment link to your phone number. Is there anything else I can assist you with?’
DW: No, that’s great, thank you very much.
‘Thank you for choosing us. You look forward to welcoming you.’
END OF DEMO
DW: So that’s the experience. I asked a few curveball questions. There was quite difficult in this environment with the noise and everything, but the idea is that whatever I was asking about, whether it was walking in the park or dog sitting or whatever it happened to be, the concierge at the hotel was able to answer those questions. That’s not possible on a hotel website today. You can book a room if you go through the process of filtering and everything, but it’s not a very rewarding experience. So we believe that the ecommerce experience that we’re used to today is over and the future is this kind of engagement. And we’re spearheading that with Rezolve.
FW: How long will it take to build trust with consumers? Because I would be, I don’t know, there’s just some inherent trust issues with AI.
And I think that’s related to not only hallucinations, but also a kind of overall perception that there’s a lack of transparency a little bit. And in terms of understanding the sort of the infrastructure of it.
DW: Well, look, I think it comes down to the very simple illustration I gave you right at the beginning where I said to, if I asked my wife to buy me a mobile phone, let’s take that same scenario using Rezolve Ai’s technology on Telefónica’s website. When I land on the website, one of our patents is that the website initiates the conversation. ‘Welcome to Telefónica’s website. How can I help you today?’ I then say, I need to buy a mobile phone, not me, my wife, I need to buy a mobile phone for my husband.
Can you help me? The website will then say, what sort of phone would your husband need? Does he need a long battery?
So the process is kind of very familiar. It’s a familiar process because we’re used to it in the physical retail. And I think that the nirvana of digital commerce is replicating the best experience in physical retail. Unfortunately, physical retail in many instances is very poor, the experience. But when you have a very good experience in physical retail, there’s nothing like it. When you’re dealing with a really well-versed, knowledgeable, competent salesperson who understands the products and understands how to use those products and everything about it, then you’re very encouraged to buy from that individual. And that’s the experience that we believe AI allows us to deliver, our AI anyway, allows us to deliver in the e-commerce and digital channels.
FW: I want to ask you about something slightly different, which is hallucinations.
I’m a journalist, I think a lot about how AI and LLMs in particular are affecting the information landscape.
And the fact is a lot more people are not going to go to your sort of Guardian or New York Times app in the morning, they’re going to be asking chat GPT. So what’s going on today?
DW: So look, our solution, as you saw just then, we control the process from the initial query through to the checkout. We bypass that awful checkout with a payment link to your phone. And that’s an important distinction because the whole seamless exercise was me talking and then tapping and paying with Apple Pay or one of the very simple payment methods using a payment link. So that flow is if I land on the Telefonica website or I land on a hotel website or I land on a retail website. But we also provide as part of that suite the agentic interface so that an agent coming from chat GPT or Siri or Gemini or Perplexity or any of those AI interfaces who will in time want to send an agent off to the Telefonica website to interrogate their website.
The problem is that they’re saying they’re promoting to the commerce vendors, hey, just write your, open up your systems to allow us to send our agents in. And what you’re basically doing when you do that is you’re letting people into your warehouse unaccompanied to come and pillage stuff off the shelves.
What we do with part of Rezolve is we provide the agent on the other side. We provide the AI interface that controls the narrative with that AI agent. So the agentic commerce interface is just as important as the consumer interface. Both need to be controlled by the merchant. Otherwise the merchant loses control. So we’ve created the next generation of commerce for agentic and conversational engagement on digital channels. And I think, I honestly believe this, and you heard it here first, this will replace all existing websites. We won’t see existing websites where you navigate down little channels of men’s sports, footwear, running shoes, 40 items, 40 items, back again, men’s footwear, trail shoes, 40 items, 40 items, back again. That navigation process, which has been adequate for a number of decades, it’s over, that’s finished. And this new way of engaging is going to rapidly displace that and provide a much richer, much better experience.
FW: Interesting. But sorry, just coming back to the information space briefly, just because, just for a minute, I know this isn’t sort of Rezolve’s main purpose or purpose at all, but academics and researchers do say that hallucinations are ultimately impossible to get around at this stage.
DW: That’s not true. We’ve solved it. We solved the problem because we, and it’s going to take more than two minutes, unfortunately, to explain it, but we have solved the problem. And the way we solve the problem is that we use AI and Gen AI selectively in answering the query, but not necessarily interrogating the dataset. And we have structured a process which is patented around how we enhance data first, then interrogate it, that solves the problem of hallucinations. And I can explain this, but I don’t think I can do anything.
But the point is that we believe we’ve done that. And Microsoft and Google, who are both our partners, who are reselling our solutions, have both been completely blown away by the approach we’ve taken. And it is what it is. So we are 100% confident that we have solved the problem of hallucinations with our approach. And it took us nine years, by the way. We didn’t do this yesterday. And as a result of that, we’re sitting on an extremely valuable asset that right now we’re deploying in the area of commerce and retail. But over time, we will deploy it in aerospace engineering, chemicals, sports, and other verticals over time in the future.
FW: Final thing. What are the, just thinking not for you specifically, but broadly across the AI industry, what are the biggest things you’re concerned about? Either from a finance perspective or anything else?
DW: Well, okay, so I’ll make some controversial comments because why not?
So first of all, I think that this, the approach that’s being taken to generative AI, general consumer services in terms of funding is mad. I think that there is one clear winner, which is open AI. And I think the other players in the market who are pursuing a consumer service, which includes XAI and others, it’s just a waste of time and money. I don’t know why they’re wasting their time because there is only, the leader in the space has already established themselves and are way ahead of the game. So that was my opinion.
The next wave of successful deployments of AI is in very tight vertical solutions that obviously are very carefully constructed to prevent hallucinations or to provide significant oversight, human oversight, to prevent hallucinations causing problems.
And right now in industry, apart from our solution, every solution that’s being deployed has human oversight to make sure that there’s not mistakes. So supply chain solutions are not being deployed and let to run on their own. They’re being deployed and then they say, oh, I think we need to buy X hundred items. And that goes to an individual, a human individual who says, yeah, that’s good. So I think over time we’re going to see these much more tight vertical deployments. And I think that the future is very bright for the deployment of AI, but I also worry about, you know, Terminator 3 or Terminator 4 or whatever the version would be, which, you know, I think is a very real prospect too.
FW: Okay, we’ll talk about that next web summit. Thanks so much, Dan Wagner.
