00:24:17 · Gil Feig
[00:24:17] S0: Okay, so let's say that there is a scenario where data got hacked, and this could be people's financial data and potentially their social security numbers, right? There's a few different things that they'll do. So first, they'll reach out to the company and say, Hey, we have all this data, pay us for it. And the company has a lot to think about. They immediately engage crisis management and their thoughts like candidly going through their head is, you know, one, if we pay for this data from this company, are they truly going to then wipe all the data and get rid of it? You know, we still have to notify everybody because technically once a second copy of that data is out there, it's out there. So that's kind of the next piece. So people are thinking about how much it's gonna cost to get them back. They're thinking about damage control. They're thinking about their brand, thinking about all of it. But the attackers know that. They know that actually this data might be useless to us. It might not be worth anything, but we know that to the company, it's their reputation on the line. And so that's who they're gonna blackmail. They're gonna go after that company and say, you do not pay us for this data, we're gonna leak it. And we know that means that you're gonna lose all of your customers. There's other instances where they're they genuinely hacked credit card numbers and the data itself can just be immediately sold on a black market. So that's another instance. In either case, the company that got breached technically has to notify everyone about it, though they often tend not to do it. But that's why I think companies really care about it. You know, morally, you should care about good security, but business is business. Companies are thinking about their own reputation and how much any breach is going to cost them at the end of the day.
00:25:43 · Molly O'Shea, Gil Feig, Shensi Ding
[00:25:43] S1: Okay, so what else is the state of the AI infrastructure market? What's going on? [00:25:47] S0: I think I think costs is another one that's been that's been, you know, really crazy to follow along, you know, you see everyone saying token max token max. Yeah. And that's really great. In theory, it actually is great in practice, too, you're seeing a lot being built, but then the bill comes to the CFO and it's actually really brutal and way worse than they expected. And even if they got double the productivity, they might not have had double the budget for headcount and they, they, you know, spent unreasonably. And so we've invested really heavily in, in cost savings, using our gateway product, which has been really cool to see as well. [00:26:18] S2: Yep. And I think a lot more margin focus is also starting to increase. Like, obviously, saw Cursor increase their margins, which is very, very hard to do. But it is really important. And there are a lot of really great open source providers out there too that are very cheap. And maybe that's like the best platform to route to if you're doing like what's one plus one or like, or like, hi or like, thanks. But it's really hard to automate that. [00:26:39] S1: Yeah. Yeah. What else are you guys seeing?
00:26:42 · Gil Feig
[00:26:42] S0: I could share another this is not quite gateway. But another, another problem that we've really seen actually is, is internal use of AI. Okay. So when we talk about, you know, our agent handler product, which helps you add, you know, integrations to your products, one of the things that we heard in a lot of customer conversations was, Hey, actually internally, we want our employees using and automating everything. And, you know, I actually had a, you know, the CTO of a really large financial firm say to me, my employees have been coming to me and saying, all my friends are using agents to automate this and do that and do that. And why aren't we? And he was like, because we're regulated because we can't let you just connect all of our internal services to all of your external services. But really they should be able to do that. Right? And just security is a big problem there. So one of the big things that we've invested in and we just see people with a lot more demand for is the governance and control over the agents and full visibility into what your employees are actually doing with them. So let my employees actually go and connect Salesforce and read all the data out of it and send it to other places, but also do in the way that I'm going to detect if, you know, again, like bank numbers are being sent places or, if proprietary data is being moved out of company boundaries. So that's another big and for that you see companies being like, this has to tightly couple with our identity providers and keep up with all of our employees. If they ever leave, they immediately get access revoked. Just been seeing a lot of demand for that sort of thing.
00:28:09 · Shensi Ding, Gil Feig
[00:28:09] S2: Yeah. Another thing is also granular access. So for example, if you hire a PR intern and you want them to have access to, like, your account, so you want them to be able to see the accounts in Salesforce, right now it's either you give them full access to Salesforce or you can't get them access at all. And there isn't really a great solution for the in between, but we were able to make it so you could your that, like, IT manager or the CTO can make it so that a PR intern can only, like, see accounts and nothing else. Like, as hard as they try to, like, write data to Salesforce and we try to delete any data, it's just not possible. So we're able to help you do that. [00:28:36] S0: Yeah. And the the one of the problems there too is, like, people aren't just using one platform for all of this. Right? People at companies are constantly saying, I wanna try this new platform, this new platform, this and security can't govern that. They can't keep track of what's being connected where. And so part of what what we built was was basically that central hub. So, you connect to all this software in one place on Merge Agent Handler, and then Merge Agent Handler connects to any platform you're using. So if you have some intern who's like, I want to try this new AI tool, you say, Okay, you can use that. But the only tool you're allowed to connect it to is merge agent handler. That connects to all the tools in a more governed.
00:28:36 · Gil Feig, Shensi Ding, Molly O'Shea
[00:28:36] S0: Yeah. And the the one of the problems there too is, like, people aren't just using one platform for all of this. Right? People at companies are constantly saying, I wanna try this new platform, this new platform, this and security can't govern that. They can't keep track of what's being connected where. And so part of what what we built was was basically that central hub. So, you connect to all this software in one place on Merge Agent Handler, and then Merge Agent Handler connects to any platform you're using. So if you have some intern who's like, I want to try this new AI tool, you say, Okay, you can use that. But the only tool you're allowed to connect it to is merge agent handler. That connects to all the tools in a more governed. [00:29:11] S2: What's also cool about that is it's kind of like the employee's, like, central node for all connectivity. So whether they're using Codex or Claude or, you know, Perplexity or whatever you're using, all the connectivity and the actions through go through that node. So the CTO is able to see all the activity, if there's any security violations, and also if they want [00:29:25] S1: to revoke any access or add more access. Can I ask this? What are the most popular connections?
00:29:25 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding
[00:29:25] S1: to revoke any access or add more access. Can I ask this? What are the most popular connections? [00:29:31] S2: Yeah. I mean, it's just like general, like, productivity tools, like ticketing systems, like file storage systems, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox. Also people are really obviously, like messaging systems are very common just for, like, automation of, communication. Email is very popular. Also, like code repositories are very popular. But, yeah, just like general general, like, productivity tools. There are more specific connectors that are very popular for specific functions. So, like, obviously for accounting, it's like the, like, most common accounting systems, like QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero. Marketing teams also are starting to use a lot of different platforms too, HubSpot, like HR I don't even know how to say this one, but yeah, like all these different, like, GEO different platforms too. But yeah, just overall, like it, it everything is getting connected. Even if there isn't, even if there isn't a public MCP server, we'll generally we specifically create our own tools. So that's not like a blocker for anyone.