Twilio, the customer engagement platform, has announced the winners of its AI Startup Searchlight accolades. The awards acknowledge and honour innovative start-ups that are creatively employing Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Twilio's different suites to enhance their digital communications and offer enriched experiences to customers.

The award-winning startups are advancing the practical application of AI across multiple sectors, including healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and beyond. Winners were chosen based on their level of creativity, business, and technical impact, along with their potential for yielding long-term benefits for customers. The selection process was overseen by an expert judging panel, which comprised Khozema Shipchandler, the CEO of Twilio, Brandon Leen, the Head of Twilio Ventures, and Sinead Bovell, Futurist, AI Expert, and the Founder of WAYE.

Khozema Shipchandler, the CEO of Twilio, said, “We introduced CustomerAI last year to empower businesses to unlock better customer engagement with AI. It’s inspiring to see how the AI Startup Searchlight honorees are doing exactly that – innovating with data, communications, and the power of AI to transform their customer relationships.”

Among the honoured startups, the Melbourne-based company Next Order utilises AI and Twilio, including tools such as Programmable Messaging, Email API, Voice, IVR, and SIP Trunking to revolutionise the hospitality sector. They offer a cloud-based POS system that consolidates everything restaurants need into one platform, thus effectively automating customer interactions and enabling them to prioritise customer service with their top-notch AI assistance module.

Sinead Bovell, the founder of WAYE, remarked, "Though we are still in the early days of AI and it will continue to evolve, this cohort is a testament to the exciting potential of the technology. Through this initiative, Twilio has really shone a light on the opportunities AI creates to strengthen relationships between businesses and their customers".

The diverse range of Startup Searchlight honourees demonstrates the transformative possibilities that AI, coupled with Twilio resources, can produce in diverse industries. The honourees are bestowed with USD $10,000 in Twilio credits, along with a complimentary consultation with Twilio Ventures. With the aim to support the next generation of founders reinventing the future of customer engagement, Twilio looks forward to seeing the exciting future innovations these startups will introduce with the aid of their awarded resources.

Twilio's AI Startup Searchlight honourees exemplify how companies of all sizes and sectors are utilising AI, with the support of Twilio, to unlock the full potential of their customer relationships. Thanks to its CustomerAI technology, which fuses immense language models with the rich customer data that Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform provides, Twilio is committed to helping companies enrich their customer relationships.