Transforming customer engagement with AI-powered personalization

Brian Ames
Program Manager
DeepBrew & AI, Starbucks

Brian leads the team that built DeepBrew - the AI and Machine Learning Platform at Starbucks that serves over a billion recommendations per year. The system uses Reinforcement Learning to let users "teach" the DeepBrew brain how to optimize their Starbucks experience.

Brian's overriding mandate is to achieve "AI For Humanity" - i.e. to bring people together and uplift everyday experiences. The "Brain" frees up time for Starbucks' baristas so they can focus more on customer interactions, knows how to make the transaction of tens of millions of customers as personalized and frictionless as possible and promotes sustainability initiatives.

DeepBrew seeks to define a future where an "AI For Humanity" brings people together.

Arun Veettil
Founder & CEO
Skellam AI & Qubriux, Inc

Arun has been in the tech industry for 20 years and has been working on ML since 2010. For the last five years, he has been working at the intersection of machine learning and product development at Skellam AI. He was a Principal Data Scientist at Starbucks and an architect of DeepBrew AI- the most decorated personalization platform for Starbucks. Before Starbucks, he was working with companies such as Point Inside, Nordstrom Advanced Analytics, the Walt Disney Company, Boeing, and IBM. Presently, Arun is the CEO & Founder of Skellam AI and Qubriux, Inc where he is innovating with Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings for multiple industries to help businesses with AI, Automation, and Personalization capabilities.

His expertise includes developing machine learning algorithms to work against very large amounts of data and building large-scale distributed applications. Arun holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Washington.