Dataspeak: the bridge that connects AI to real business processes

Eight ambitious AI startups have been selected to compete in the AI Pitch Competition. The finals are on November 13, 2025, and IO+ will portray each contestant in the run-up to that event. The AI Pitch Competition is a Brabant-based contest that highlights the most innovative AI solutions, offering startups the opportunity to present their ideas, connect with industry leaders, and accelerate their growth. Today, we show what DataSpeak has in store for the world. Founders Arno van den Berg, Guido Rietbroek, and Willem Mulder answer our questions.

What specific AI technology is at the core of your solution?

"We have seen that many companies neither have the technology nor the expertise to bring the benefits of AI to their core business. It might be easy to get some pilot projects started, but it is very hard to create impact in the current complex products and process landscape. The DataSpeak AI Platform is built to overcome these barriers. Together with our customers, we create specialised assistants that go beyond question answering and actually take action for the customer by integration into existing processes and systems. We support frontend interactions with chat, voice, and avatars, and backend automation with our workflow engine. Security, analytics, interactive dashboards, human handoff, and a great API are built in. All in all, the platform enables us to build high-quality solutions at speed, and make our clients ready for a conversational future!"

How scalable is your AI solution?

"Technically, the DataSpeak AI Platform itself is ready for scale and already handles many clients and over 100.000 messages per month. It would scale to millions easily. The main challenge is reducing the time required to onboard new clients. We aim to do that in two ways. First, market focus. Our product is successful in many verticals, and it’s tempting to ‘do it all’. To scale effectively, we must concentrate on the verticals with the most traction, work with partners in those verticals to integrate with their products, and preconfigure solutions/templates that cover the typical use cases in these verticals. Customers would get a solution that’s not only better than what they could get elsewhere, but also better integrated with the other products they already use, and also faster and cheaper to set up. We want to be the no-brainer solution for those markets.

Second, simplifying the onboarding and product experience. Our product is very flexible and modular, which is a great strength. However, to enable scale and go full SaaS (directly or through partners), we should also keep things simple. We are currently picking specific use cases where the platform excels, then building accessible onboarding flows for those, creating an amazing UX, and keeping things as much out-of-the-box as possible. We work with renowned UX experts to make this happen, and already have partners that bundle/preconfigure our product for their clients."

How does your startup address potential ethical concerns related to bias, fairness, or transparency in AI decision-making?

"Our approach to ethical AI centers on proactive safety and verifiable accuracy. First, we address malicious intent using our Security Agent, which acts as an immediate firewall to detect and block malicious or discriminatory user inputs, ensuring the AI processes only safe, legitimate requests. Beyond the input, we have strict LLM instructions that require answers to be solely based on verifiable, found information and nothing else, preventing the AI from generating speculative or biased content. Every found document is checked for relevance, and transparency is maintained by always displaying the sources used to generate the answer."

In what ways do you believe your AI solution can positively impact society?

"We believe the future of brand and system interactions will be through simple conversations, and our assistants make that possible. This has a direct positive impact by making complex processes effortless and accessible for everyone. While AI is bringing a big transformation, we are focused on ensuring it's a positive one. For us, this means being 'powered by AI, but focused on humans', which is literally the first slide in our sales deck. We explicitly design our assistants to improve the quality of work for human employees, not just to replace them. We see the risk of a "de-humanized" workplace, so we counter it by focusing on augmentation. Our assistants handle the repetitive workload, and we measure our success in concrete KPIs like improved employee work happiness."

Tell us more about your entrepreneurial journey

"We’ve had many struggles, but a few important ones are interesting to mention. In the very first stage, when generative AI was the new kid on the block, it was actually easy to get a seat at the table of companies. Everyone was interested in the new possibilities of this new AI thing, and we loved talking about it. However, even though everyone liked talking about it, it was hard for companies to commit to actual projects. It was unclear what pain AI could solve; there were serious safety and ethical concerns, and calculating ROI was difficult. We were a small startup company without a product yet, and we found it difficult to sell the dream.

At the same time, we received numerous opportunities to develop AI products for other companies. However, our vision was to focus on building our own proprietary product. This commitment meant sacrificing potentially great deals and enduring the frustration of wasted energy when intellectual property (IP) issues derailed promising negotiations.

Finally, after building the first version of our current platform and focusing on customer service chatbots, we faced new problems. First, it felt like everything we developed could be part of the out-of-the-box product of OpenAI or any other LLM provider at the next launch. We knew we had to find a niche, get away from the big boys, and solve one problem really well, but we couldn’t find the right angle. Talking about the product and its endless possibilities was easy, but committing to one specific customer pain and going all-in was too hard, especially because we had built the platform in such a generic way. Since then, we have been lucky enough to find great customers across different segments, and we have delivered strong results for them. The best example is Vandebron, where we achieved significant reductions in chat escalations and a substantial increase in customer satisfaction. This allowed us to grow into specific markets, improve the platform based on customer feedback, and tighten our focus. The market's widespread adoption of conversational interfaces (chat and voice) now helps pave the way for us. Despite the lingering negative perception associated with legacy "chatbots" —often seen as clunky tools that fail to grasp user intent— we now have a strong product, a standardized implementation process, and excellent customer stories to convince more and more companies that DataSpeak is the right fit for them."

How are you preparing for the increasing regulatory frameworks around AI, such as GDPR, AI Act, or other data privacy laws?

"We genuinely care about regulatory compliance and were able to adapt quickly from the start. Our initial major step was to ensure that all data remains within Europe. We are embedding AI Act compliance directly into our platform and continuously verifying our customers' adherence to GDPR obligations. We are currently finalizing our ISO 27001 certification. We understand the urgency companies have for data safety, and we strongly believe that the responsible, safe use of generative AI begins with doing it right from day one."

Future vision: What is your long-term vision for your AI solution?

"Our long-term vision for the DataSpeak AI Platform is to become the Conversational Operating System for the SME. First for specific markets like insurance, energy, and government, then later for everyone, deeply embedded in every layer of business operations and customer interaction. Over the next 5 to 10 years, we see our technology evolving to deliver true, autonomous, and intelligent action. Evolution of the technology would include Autonomous action agents, Hyper-personalized & proactive interactions, Self-learning, and a full SaaS transformation and partner ecosystem. Given the quality of our current product, the speed of development, coupled with our developing partnerships and strong customer results, we do think we could achieve this, assuming we manage the scaling process well."

What opportunities does your location give you? What is still missing in the ecosystem you are part of?

"The support from Brabant and Breda has been fantastic for DataSpeak. We are truly grateful for opportunities like this competition; the learning experience and the network effect alone have been invaluable.

To truly accelerate, the key is to scale this support. We see an opportunity to move from scattered, local developments to more centralized, focused initiatives at a national level. Imagine the impact we could create if we focused that energy! We believe the Dutch ecosystem has the potential to become a true European AI hub, and we are perfectly positioned here in Brabant to help lead that charge."

The AI Pitch Competition: Why will you win this contest?

"We solve the real problem: The market is flooded with AI that can chat, but almost none that can act. We are the bridge that connects AI to real business processes, drive positive change and solve real problems. Our solution works: We've moved past 'pilots' and are delivering measurable KPIs for customer happiness and efficiency.

We are the right team to deliver: We are a unique combination of AI experts and business veterans that understand the 'how'—how to navigate corporate change, how to integrate with legacy tech, and how to build what companies actually need. We are the team that can bridge the gap from idea to impact. We’re ready to scale, and would use any prize money to accelerate in that direction!"