But to start, I'd like to just have you give us a, a quick background on yourselves and a little bit on Virtus Optimize.

So Greg, this is Mitch Rutledge.

I'm, uh, the CEO and one of the co-founders at Virtus AI.

So like I said, excited to be back.

Virtus is a, a growth and personalization solution for community financial institutions.

We launched the company a little over four years ago with really the goal of empowering the smaller Main Street financial institutions to leverage all of that amazing data that they have about account holders, right? They have all the transactions, all of the balances, all of the, the account information, but turning that into action and value for their customers and members in an efficient way is what we're trying to do to help them compete against the mega banks in delivering the personalized and intelligent experience that their customers and members expect today.

We say we wanna bring the Amazon, Spotify, Netflix experience and intelligence to credit unions and community banks to deliver on the, what their members and customers expect today.

How did those pieces that you learned translate into what you were able to show on stage from the technology standpoint? What were some of the pieces that were up on, on display for our audience that were a direct result of some of those conversations, some of those things that you were able to learn from the market?

Yeah.

I think a couple of things that I've seen is one is, you know, more companies than ever here.

Right.

I think now something like 72 is, you know, every year.

So there are just so much innovation is happening.

So I think, you know, hats off to Greg for finding amazing companies.

You know, they don't let everybody in.

So I just wanted to mention that.

So that's a little bit about my background and, and Filene, so we can turn it over to Mitch now.

Yeah.

Well, Sean, again, thanks to you for having me, and, and Steven and I here to talk about this exciting work we've been doing together.

So I am the co-founder and have the pleasure of being the CEO at Virtus AI.

We founded Virtus AI four years ago to really bring what we believe is the, the capabilities of a team of data scientists to empower credit unions to drive more data-driven, AI-powered personalization and member engagement at scale.

We want to be a growth engine to help them compete with the mega banks who have, you know, hundreds or thousands of data scientists and billions of dollars to spend on AI.

We want to create a, a solution that's really consumable for credit unions and community financial institutions of all sizes to have that same kind of capability that we say know, grow, and measure every member as they climb their financial mountain.

Yeah.

Humans can now focus on tasks that humans are very good at, so.

Hey, Lou, this is Mitch with Fertus AI.

Your original question was, have we run out of roadway? And I'll say we have definitely not run out of roadway.

And I think most people haven't even hit the on-ramp to get into this AI world.

There is so much opportunity still ahead.

Lots of talk.

And I think we hear the stories of, you know, are we getting the value? And I completely agree with Mac about there is a bit more scrutiny about how we're making investments around these kind of capabilities.

And once there's an application there across an enterprise, then I think that we're going to see a massive amount of improvement.

[laughs] Okay, Mitch, your turn.

Yeah, so I'm Mitch Rutledge.

I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders over at Virtus AI.

I'm excited to be back, Lou, on the podcast and to be joined by Steven today, uh, for this conversation.

At Virtus AI, we launched this company about four years ago to bring, you know, data-driven, AI-powered member growth and personalization to the credit union movement.

My background, I've been in technology for my entire career, you know, 25-plus years helping deliver solutions to different organizations.

We launched Virtus four years ago.

Did you guys get any indication or come away with any takeaways in terms of what the financial institutions, the credit unions can be doing to help their customers?

As a consultant to the industry, that's always the hardest part, working with clients and helping them work through their own limitations and the issues that they have already that will stand in front of a good AI initiative.

Luthus, Mitch, I completely agree with both of what you guys said.

I think just that simple question of don't ask this question of where can we go get agentic AI to solve problems? Start with what are we bad at that we might be able to use agents to help us get good at should be the framing of these conversations.

And I think there's still a lot of We have some AI.

Where do we sprinkle the AI? And it's first, though, let's figure out where we can do better, more efficiently, where we need help, and then focus in on real value added.

Find the right partners to go do it.

To your point, Mac, challenge the vendors.

What do you tell them to either bring them down to earth or to help them think of it differently?