Interview with CEO Julius Kaveh of FuturAI

Q1. You had approximately 25 years of experience in business leadership before founding FuturAI. What specific problem did you encounter in your own business that made you realise AI could fundamentally change the way companies operate?

A. I had spent around 25 years running and managing businesses before starting FuturAI, but the real turning point came while I was running a large healthcare recruitment company in the UK.

We had around 100 people in the business and were generating approximately £30 million in annual turnover. On the surface, we had built a successful company. But when I looked closely at the operation, I could see how much valuable time was being lost every day.

Our teams were dealing with thousands of repetitive enquiries. Candidates were asking the same questions, customers wanted information quickly, people were applying for roles at all hours, and our staff simply couldn't respond to everyone. I was shocked at how much was slipping through the cracks.

The problem wasn't that our people weren't working hard. They were. The problem was that we were using humans to perform thousands of tasks that technology could potentially perform faster and more consistently.  That was when I started looking seriously at AI.

We began implementing AI into the customer journey and internal processes, and I saw very quickly that this was much bigger than a chatbot or a cost-saving exercise.

AI could communicate with customers instantly, qualify enquiries, collect information, update systems, schedule appointments and move people through an entire process without waiting for someone in the office to become available.

More importantly, it allowed our people to focus on the areas where humans actually add value: building relationships, judgement, problem-solving and closing business.

Once I saw the results, I realised almost every company has similar inefficiencies hidden inside its operation.

That experience ultimately became the reason I founded FuturAI.

Q2. With your private hospital group you support, you saw conversion rates increase from approximately 23% to 74%, while customer satisfaction rose from 3.6 to 4.9 out of 5. What exactly changed in the customer journey?

A. The biggest change was speed, availability and consistency.

Before AI, somebody might make an enquiry at 8pm and wait until the following morning for a response. By then, they might have contacted three competitors.

Even during working hours, when you are dealing with large volumes of enquiries, humans naturally prioritise. Some people get called immediately, others later, and unfortunately some opportunities are lost completely.

AI changed that.

An enquiry could receive an intelligent response almost instantly, regardless of whether it came at 10am or 10pm. The AI could understand what the person needed, answer questions, collect information, qualify them and guide them towards the next action. We effectively removed unnecessary waiting from the customer journey. The conversion rate for the hospital increased from around 23% with the traditional human-led process to approximately 74% using AI, while customer satisfaction increased from 3.6 to 4.9 out of 5.

That taught me something very important.

People sometimes assume customers don't want to interact with AI. What customers actually don't want is a bad experience. They don't want to wait hours for an answer. They don't want to repeat themselves. They don't want to chase a company.

If AI gives somebody a faster, easier and more personalised experience, while giving them access to a human when they genuinely need one, the customer experience can actually improve dramatically.

Q3. Many companies today are experimenting with ChatGPT, AI chatbots and AI agents. What is the biggest mistake businesses make when adopting AI?

A. The biggest mistake is starting with the technology rather than starting with the business problem.

A company hears about ChatGPT or AI agents and says, "We need AI."

My first question would be: why?

Where are you losing money? Where are your people wasting time? Where are customers dropping out? Which processes are slow? Where are mistakes happening? What prevents the business from scaling?

Those are the questions that matter.

Putting a chatbot on a website doesn't suddenly make a company an AI business.

The real opportunity comes when AI is integrated into the actual operation of the company.

Our approach at FuturAI is therefore to understand the business first and the technology second.

We map the customer journey and internal processes, identify inefficiencies and then determine where AI, workflow automation and integration can produce a measurable commercial result.

If there is no clear business outcome, there is very little value in implementing AI simply because everyone else is doing it.

Q4. FuturAI describes itself as an "enterprise AI integration company" rather than simply an AI development company. What does AI integration mean in practical terms?

A. This distinction is extremely important to us.

We are not trying to build another ChatGPT.

The world's leading technology companies are investing billions into developing increasingly powerful AI models. Our role is to take the best available technology and integrate it into real businesses.

Most established companies already have technology everywhere: CRM systems, ERP systems, databases, WhatsApp, email, websites, telephony, booking platforms, payment systems and internal software.

The problem is that many of these systems operate separately and still require humans to move information between them.

AI integration means connecting that infrastructure and creating an intelligent layer across the business.

Imagine a customer contacts a company through WhatsApp. The AI understands the enquiry, checks the CRM, identifies the customer, accesses relevant information, answers their question, qualifies the opportunity, checks availability, schedules an appointment and updates the CRM automatically.

That is completely different from a chatbot answering FAQs.

That's an AI-powered business process.

I believe the competitive advantage over the next few years will increasingly move away from simply having access to an AI model. Most companies will have access to similar models.

The advantage will come from how intelligently those models are integrated into a company's data, systems, processes and customer journey.

That is where FuturAI is positioning itself.

Q5. You and your CTO, Von Rommel Peixoto, come from very different but complementary backgrounds. How does this influence FuturAI's approach?

A. It is one of our biggest strengths.

I come at AI from the perspective of somebody who has spent around 25 years running businesses. I understand P&Ls, sales, operations, staffing, customer experience and the realities of trying to scale an organisation. Rommel comes from the technology side and has the ability to look at those business problems and understand how we can technically solve them.

So when we sit with a client, we don't begin the conversation by talking about APIs, language models or software architecture. We start by understanding their business.

I want to know where they make money, where they lose money, what frustrates their customers, what frustrates their employees and what is preventing them from growing faster.

Then Rommel and our technical team can design the architecture required to solve those problems.

We also have access to an extended global development capability of hundreds of developers, which gives us the ability to bring in specialist expertise depending on the complexity of a project.

That combination of business understanding and deep technical capability is fundamental to how we are building FuturAI.

Q6. FuturAI can connect AI with CRM, ERP, databases, WhatsApp, telephony, booking systems and other infrastructure. Could you give a real-world example?

A. Take a healthcare provider receiving thousands of patient enquiries.

Traditionally, a patient sends a WhatsApp message or submits a website enquiry. Somebody needs to read it, understand what the patient wants, answer questions, potentially call them, check availability, book an appointment and then enter or update information in another system.

There may be five or six manual steps involved in what appears to the customer to be one simple enquiry.

Now imagine AI sitting across that entire process. A patient sends a WhatsApp message at 9:47pm.

The AI responds immediately. It understands what treatment or service the patient is interested in, answers relevant questions, qualifies the enquiry, collects the required information, checks appointment availability, books the patient and updates the relevant system.

The following morning, the team doesn't arrive to hundreds of unanswered messages.

They arrive to qualified enquiries and appointments that have already been processed.

The same principle can apply to voice calls, emails, recruitment applications, property enquiries, hotel bookings or financial-service enquiries.

This is why we talk about enterprise integration rather than individual AI tools.

We want to transform the process from beginning to end.

Q7. There is growing concern that AI will replace jobs. FuturAI talks about removing unnecessary work from humans rather than removing humans from organisations. What does the future workplace look like?

A. I don't believe the best use of AI is simply replacing as many people as possible.

I think the bigger opportunity is removing unnecessary work from people.

If someone is employed because they are good at building relationships, selling, caring for patients or solving complex problems, why should they spend hours copying information between systems, answering the same basic question hundreds of times or carrying out repetitive administrative tasks?

That isn't the best use of human ability.

AI can take a significant amount of that workload away.

The organisations that get this right will become much more productive without necessarily becoming less human.  In fact, I think they can become more human.

Your employees have more time to speak to customers who genuinely need them. Managers have better information to make decisions. Salespeople spend more time selling. Healthcare professionals spend more time with patients.

The future workplace, in my opinion, will be humans and AI working together, with each doing what they are best at.

Q8. Why did you choose the UAE as the location for FuturAI's headquarters, and what opportunities do you see in the UAE and GCC?

A. The UAE was a very deliberate decision.

What is happening here around AI is incredibly exciting because the country isn't just talking about the future, it is actively building for it. There is a clear ambition from the leadership to position the UAE at the forefront of artificial intelligence, digital transformation and the next generation of business.

For a company like FuturAI, that creates the right environment.

Businesses here are ambitious. They want to grow quickly, they are open to technology, and increasingly they understand that AI isn't something they can consider in five years. The transformation is happening now.

I also think the UAE has a unique opportunity geographically.

It connects the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe, attracts international capital and talent, and has become a place where global companies increasingly want to establish themselves.

Our ambition is therefore much bigger than simply building an AI company that operates in Dubai.

We want to build a global enterprise AI integration company headquartered in the UAE.

We already have strong experience and relationships in the UK, the UAE is our headquarters and growth platform, and over time we see significant opportunities throughout the GCC and internationally.

I believe the UAE can become one of the world's most important centres for the practical implementation of AI, and we want FuturAI to be part of that story.

Q9. FuturAI has experience in healthcare, Finance and recruitment but aims to work across real estate, hospitality, financial services and retail. What common problems do you see?

A. When you look underneath the surface, businesses across different industries have remarkably similar problems. Customers wait too long for responses. Sales teams waste time qualifying poor leads.

Employees repeatedly enter the same information into different systems. Managers don't have enough visibility over what is happening. Customer data sits in separate platforms.

Opportunities are lost because somebody didn't follow up quickly enough.

People spend hours every week doing administrative work that adds very little value.

Whether you are running a hospital, recruitment company, hotel, estate agency, retailer or financial-services company, these problems are fundamentally very similar.

That is why I believe enterprise AI integration has such enormous potential.

We can take the experience we have developed in one sector and adapt the underlying architecture to another.  The fastest measurable impact is normally where there is high volume: customer enquiries, lead qualification, bookings, customer service, internal administration, sales follow-up and data processing.

Those areas can produce measurable improvements relatively quickly—in conversion, response times, productivity, customer satisfaction and ultimately profitability.

Q10. Looking five years ahead, what do you want FuturAI to become, and what role can the UAE play?

A. Our ambition is to build FuturAI into one of the leading enterprise AI integration companies globally.

I don't want us to be known for selling chatbots.

I want companies to come to FuturAI when they want to understand how AI can transform the way their organisation actually operates. That means looking across the entire business: customer acquisition, sales, operations, customer service, HR, training, reporting, communications and management information.

Over time, I believe companies will effectively have an AI layer running throughout their organisation.

Some processes will be completely autonomous. Others will combine AI with human decision-making.

FuturAI's role is to help organisations design, build and integrate that infrastructure.

And I believe the UAE is one of the best places in the world from which to build that company.

The country has capital, ambition, international connectivity and, importantly, leadership that understands the strategic importance of AI.

If the UAE continues at its current pace, I believe it can become a global showcase for what happens when AI moves beyond experimentation and becomes embedded into the infrastructure of government and business.

Our ambition is for FuturAI to become one of the companies exporting that expertise from the UAE to the rest of the world.

Q11. If AI models themselves are no longer the main competitive advantage, what will differentiate the companies that succeed with AI?

A. Execution.  AI is becoming democratised very quickly.

The same powerful models will increasingly be available to everybody, from a one-person company to a multinational organisation. So simply having access to AI isn't going to be a competitive advantage.

The competitive advantage will be what you do with it.

Do you understand your business well enough to identify where AI can actually create value?

Is your data organised? 

Can your systems communicate with each other?

Can AI access the right information securely?

Can it take actions rather than simply provide answers?

Can you redesign processes around AI rather than attaching AI to an inefficient process?

And most importantly: can you measure the commercial outcome?

I think we are moving from the era of companies asking, "What can AI do?" to asking, "What can AI do for my business?"

That's a much more important question.

The companies that succeed will be the ones that integrate AI deeply into their operations while keeping a very clear focus on customers, employees and commercial results.

That's exactly where we see FuturAI's opportunity.

Our vision is simple: we don't want to sell companies AI for the sake of AI.

We want to understand how their business works, identify where AI can create the greatest measurable impact, integrate it into their existing infrastructure and ultimately help them become more productive, more profitable and better businesses. That is what enterprise AI integration means to us.