Nikola Mrkšić is the Co-Founder and CEO of PolyAI, one of the world’s leading voice AI companies, helping enterprises automate customer service through conversational AI at massive scale.
Before PolyAI, Nikola was a machine learning researcher and part of the team behind Siri. In this episode, he joins James to unpack what the world is only now starting to understand about voice AI, why most automation still misses the point, and how PolyAI has built a full stack enterprise product that goes far beyond simply reducing call queues.
They discuss how PolyAI is used by major brands across hospitality, utilities, retail, banking and insurance, and why the real opportunity is not just handling calls, but turning the contact centre into an intelligence layer for the whole business. Nikola also explains why enterprise voice AI is harder than it looks, where the moat really sits, and why owning the models and the application layer matters.
The conversation covers Siri, Gordon Ramsay, pricing power, Nvidia, enterprise stickiness, and what it takes to build a category leader from Europe.
Topics include:
Why Siri was too early for the vision it was aiming at
Why PolyAI focused on the step between clunky IVR and true AI assistants
How voice AI can improve revenue, customer experience and operational insight
Why enterprise deployments become hard to rip out
The difference between real voice AI companies and wrappers
Whether voice AI is becoming commoditised
How PolyAI thinks about pricing, margins and defensibility
Why Nikola believes many “AI companies” are borrowing from the future
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