Example◆Video · 10:55 — 12:40

AI sales agents outperform human sales teams—Kavak's agents convert 2.1x more than humans and tripled NPS, because they are infinitely patient, know the full customer history, plan long-term, never tire, and every agent learns from every mistake instantly.

Kavak built sales agents rather than support agents, combining expertise in financing, insurance, car advisory, and trade-ins into one mega-expert. They convert 2.1x more than humans and tripled customer satisfaction. ✦ AI generated

Ali Massa · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-10 · original ↗

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“Do your agents really sell to customers?”

So, so we never built customer support or customer service agents. We we we built like sales agents. It's extremely hard to sell a car in in Latin America. So, imagine someone wanting to buy a car, they can choose like among like 20,000 SKUs. Then they need to pick like financing and go through the financing process, insurance, and and coverage. And then they're probably trading in their car. So, so we need to quote that car. So, it's a process that if someone does it or or the way Kavak did it back in in 2020 2021, was you need to be extremely good at 15 different things and have 15 different experts in 15 different teams. And usually the person would go and speak with the expert in financing, the expert in car car advisory, the expert in buying, the expert in insurance, and they'll build a package and buy a car. That's extremely hard to do. But, like the first thing we did was, okay, can we get an agent to be better than the expert in each of these things? And then put it together and have like a mega expert that's an expert in insurance, financing, etc. And that's who we put in front of the customer. So, the experience for the customer is amazing. We tripled uh NPS and customer satisfaction score by putting the the agent in front of the of the customer. And it first it converted like 50% more than our human team, and now it's converting over that like 2.1 uh x more.

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10:55customers and being able to perform >> Mhm. >> the highest leverage task, which in your case would be selling. Do your agents really sell to customers? >> Yes. So, so we never built customer support or customer service agents. We we we built like sales agents. It's extremely hard to sell a car in in Latin America. So, imagine someone wanting to buy a car, they can choose like among like 20,000

11:21SKUs. Then they need to pick like financing and go through the financing process, insurance, and and coverage. And then they're probably trading in their car. So, so we need to quote that car. So, it's a process that if someone does it or or the way Kavak did it back in in in 2020 2021, was you need to be extremely good at 15 different things and have 15

11:46different experts in 15 different teams. And usually the person would go and speak with the expert in financing, the expert in car car advisory, the expert in buying, the expert in insurance, and they'll build a package and buy a car. That's extremely hard to do. But, like the first thing we did was, okay, can we get an agent to be better than the expert in each of these things? And then

12:13put it together and have like a mega expert that's an expert in insurance, financing, etc. And that's who we put in front of the customer. So, the experience for the customer is amazing. We tripled uh NPS and customer satisfaction scored by putting the the agent in front of the of the customer. And it first it converted like 50% more than our human team, and now it's converting over that like

12:402.1 uh x more. So, it's a completely different company. >> agents are better sellers. >> Totally better. And and and you get this, right? Because they're experts and they're infinitely patient and they know all your history and they they they can plan for the long term and they never get tired. So, and if they make a mistake, they learn it and the next day, not just them, but

13:05the other 200,000 agents will have learned from that mistake. So, that's the feedback loop that we engaged and and that's showing in the growth and results and satisfaction of our customers. >> Yeah. One of the well, one of two of the very cool things I think about Kavak is I think I think the world has gotten comfortable with AI can do customer service. It's still very hard to do

▦ Kavak ◉ Ali Massa

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explains mechanism → Kavak builds one long-running agent per customer with its own VM, full memory of all interactions, and a hard goal to maximize that customer's lifetime value.Ali Massa · a16z Podcast gives example → Curative's AI agent 'Gwen' increased provider network contracting volume from about 100 contracts a week (done by a human team) to about 100 contracts a day, doing 3,500 in eight weeks versus 2,300 for the entire prior year with people.Fred Turner · 20VC supports → A single person with AI agents can now outperform an entire department of a Mag 7 company.Garry Tan · a16z Podcast provides context → Evals should receive equal engineering investment as the agents themselves, and the only evals that matter are whether customers actually convert and come back—superficial metrics like call duration or number of calls are misleading.Ali Massa · a16z Podcast extends → When new models with higher intelligence arrive, companies must be willing to destroy working systems and rebuild from scratch to avoid constraining the new capability—a step Kavak took when they scrapped two years of profitable multi-agent architecture.Ali Massa · a16z Podcast