# The Self-Improving Company | Kavak's AI Playbook

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-a16z-show-436525/the-self-improving-company-kavak-s-ai-playbook
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-a16z-show-436525/the-self-improving-company-kavak-s-ai-playbook.md
Podcast: [The a16z Show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-a16z-show-436525)
Published: 2026-08-10T10:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/how-kavak-rebuilt-itself-around-ai-agents-alejandro-maza-ayala-lp7LuwGh
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/1344/afp-848985-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8/episodes/64ca2d41-4e29-406a-b05e-d686b57f1a61/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8&awEpisodeId=64ca2d41-4e29-406a-b05e-d686b57f1a61&feed=JGE3yC0V
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-a16z-show-436525/episodes/the-self-improving-company-kavak-s-ai-playbook
Duration seconds: 2240

## Resource

Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez are joined by Alejandro Maza Ayala, Chief Product & AI Officer at Kavak, to unpack how the Latin American used-car marketplace rebuilt itself around AI agents, with 96% of customer interactions and 95% of transactions now handled by agents. Alejandro explains why Kavak decided that simply giving employees AI tools wasn't enough, and instead redesigned the company's systems, teams, and customer experience around agents. They discuss why Kavak spends as much engineering effort on evals as it does building agents, how its AI sellers outperform its human teams, and an experiment where an AI "CEO" increased profits in one city by 50% in its first month. The conversation also explores what happens to organizational structure when agents do most of the work, why Kavak trains everyone from executives to mechanics to build with AI, and Alejandro's argument that companies looking for incremental AI adoption may be missing the larger opportunity: redesigning the organization itself.

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## Transcript

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