Artificial intelligence is creating opportunities to rethink how businesses operate, from managing employees and coordinating healthcare teams to delivering better customer experiences. Across industries, founders are moving beyond traditional software by developing intelligent platforms that automate complex workflows, connect fragmented systems, and help organizations make better decisions.
A new generation of startups is applying AI to some of the most operationally demanding sectors of the economy. These five founders are taking different approaches to that opportunity, building companies that aim to make essential business processes more efficient, scalable, and adaptable.
Connor Watumull – Co-founder and CEO of Miter
Connor Watumull co-founded Miter in 2021 to address the operational challenges facing construction and field service contractors. Before launching the company, he worked in product management, consulting, and venture capital at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he developed an interest in the technology gaps affecting traditional industries. His experience working closely with construction businesses helped him recognize how much time contractors spend navigating complicated payroll requirements, labor regulations, and disconnected administrative systems.
Under Watumull’s leadership, Miter has developed an AI-powered operating system for construction that brings workforce management, payroll, compliance, field operations, and financial workflows together. The platform is designed specifically for the complexities of the construction industry, helping contractors manage everything from employee onboarding and time tracking to job costing and safety reporting. By combining previously fragmented processes, Watumull aims to give contractors better visibility into their operations while allowing them to focus more resources on building infrastructure and growing their businesses.
Veeraj Shah – Co-founder and CEO of Vitalize
Veeraj Shah co-founded Vitalize to tackle some of the most difficult operational challenges facing healthcare organizations. Hospital staffing and scheduling involve coordinating thousands of employees, balancing patient demand, managing budgets, and ensuring appropriate clinical coverage. These responsibilities are frequently handled through fragmented systems and manual processes, creating additional pressure for nursing leaders and hospital administrators. Shah recognized that improving these workflows could help healthcare providers make better use of their existing resources while improving operational efficiency.
Vitalize is developing an AI-powered operating system that connects hospital staffing, scheduling, patient flow, and capacity management. Its platform gives healthcare organizations a more unified view of their operations, helping leaders understand workforce availability, anticipate staffing requirements, and make more informed decisions. The company’s approach focuses on turning operational data into actionable intelligence, rather than simply digitizing existing administrative processes. Shah’s vision is to help hospitals increase capacity, improve workforce coordination, and create more sustainable operating environments for healthcare professionals.
Sajid Shariff – Founder and CEO of Dextr AI
Sajid Shariff founded Dextr AI to bring artificial intelligence into the experience economy, particularly industries where customer interactions and operational execution are central to business performance. Hospitality businesses frequently deal with staffing shortages, missed reservations, repetitive guest inquiries, and complicated coordination across departments. These challenges can affect both customer satisfaction and profitability. Shariff saw an opportunity to use AI agents to handle much of this operational workload while allowing employees to concentrate on delivering better guest experiences.
Dextr AI is building an AI workforce platform for hotels, resorts, vacation rentals, and other hospitality businesses. Its agents can handle reservations, guest communications, front desk operations, housekeeping coordination, and revenue-generating activities. The company has also introduced DOSS, an AI command layer that allows employees to manage their AI workforce using natural language. Rather than positioning AI as another standalone customer service tool, Shariff is working toward a model in which intelligent agents can execute entire operational workflows, helping hospitality businesses improve service quality and manage labor more effectively.
Mern Singh – Co-founder and CEO of Bolto
Mern Singh co-founded Bolto with the goal of simplifying how companies recruit, hire, pay, and manage employees. As organizations expand across different markets, managing talent and employment administration becomes increasingly complicated. Businesses often rely on separate providers for recruiting, payroll, compliance, and human resources, creating fragmented processes that require significant manual coordination. Singh identified an opportunity to bring these functions together through an AI-native platform that supports the entire employee lifecycle.
Bolto combines recruiting, global payroll, HR management, and employment compliance within one connected system. Its platform helps companies identify candidates, manage hiring processes, onboard employees, and handle payroll across different countries. By connecting recruiting information with employee records and payment workflows, Bolto aims to eliminate repetitive administrative work and reduce the complexity of managing distributed teams. Singh’s broader vision is to make building and managing global workforces more accessible, allowing companies to grow without having to assemble and maintain an increasingly complicated collection of HR tools.
Niel Robertson – Co-founder and CEO of Winslow
Niel Robertson is building Winslow around the idea that traditional HR software needs to evolve for an era in which both employees and AI agents participate in everyday business operations. Historically, HR platforms have been designed primarily for administrative teams, requiring employees and managers to navigate portals or submit requests for routine tasks. Robertson believes this model is becoming outdated as AI creates opportunities to make organizational information and workflows accessible across an entire company.
Winslow is developing an AI-native platform that combines payroll, benefits, HR management, and an AI coworker. Its architecture allows AI agents to work with company and employee information, execute workflows, and assist employees with operational tasks through the tools they already use. This can include everything from answering HR questions and supporting recruiting to coordinating payroll-related activities and automating internal processes. Robertson’s approach moves beyond using AI as an additional feature inside conventional HR software, instead making intelligent automation a central part of how companies manage their people and operations.
Rethinking How Businesses Get Work Done
The companies being built by these founders reflect a broader shift in enterprise technology. Instead of simply digitizing existing processes, they are developing systems that can coordinate information, automate repetitive work, and help organizations respond more intelligently to changing operational demands.
Whether in construction, healthcare, hospitality, or human resources, the opportunity for AI extends well beyond individual productivity tools. As these technologies become more capable, businesses will increasingly look for platforms that understand their operations and can take responsibility for completing complex workflows. The founders pursuing this vision are helping define what the next generation of business software could look like.
