Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs
AZX co-founders and directors, from left: Rich Evans, vice president of technology; CEO Aaron Goldfeder; and Michael Albrecht, chief operating officer. (AZX Photo)
A trio of seasoned, Seattle-area entrepreneurs has teamed up to create AZX, a startup pitched as a boutique company creating bespoke artificial intelligence solutions for critical industries.
The business launched in October, is bootstrapped and profitable, and its customers so far include unnamed, top-tier companies in clean energy and real estate.
“This company was just waiting to be born,” said Aaron Goldfeder, AZX CEO and co-founder.
Goldfeder is a co-founder of Meetingflow, a scheduling platform company that emerged from the AI2 Incubator in Seattle under the name Panda. It was acquired by Augment in March 2024.
Goldfeder previously helped launch EnergySavvy, which helped utilities manage relationships with customers. Uplight bought the business in 2019.
AZX’s other co-founders are Rich Evans, vice president of technology, and Michael Albrecht, chief operating officer. Evans was the chief technologist and a founder at Meetingflow and Albrecht was COO at EnergySavvy. All three worked at Microsoft earlier in their careers.
AZX is using AI to build custom apps and custom AI models to fix internal business processes within a company’s operations. The products are designed to integrate into a client’s existing systems.
AI can help address “messy internal processes,” Goldfeder said, but added that off-the-shelf AI tools can’t always fix the problems.
A decade ago, custom apps were shunned for being costly, poor performing and hard to maintain. AI and generative AI have upended software engineering and dashed those limitations, he said.
The AI app development field is growing increasingly crowded, with hundreds of competitors aiming to help companies speed up the creation of next-generation software.
The AZX headcount is about nine people, including full-time staff and contractors.
Its business model currently charges customers for the time spent on projects and Goldfeder said they eventually will shift to a mix of time-based fees and commissions. And while the tech solutions for now are bespoke, more generally applicable products could become available.
The startup is a public benefit corporation, Goldfeder explained, “with the mission to help accelerate the transition to clean energy, support climate adaptation, and generally bring the world’s most promising technologies to its most pressing problems.”
AZX’s projected revenue for this year should be in the low millions, he said. The plan is to double or triple the size of the team over the coming year.
For those who might be interested, Goldfeder said, “we want to find people who are super passionate about impact and AI.”
