Consumers today crave personalization. They expect retailers to recommend products they’re likely to buy and entertainment platforms to suggest shows or movies they’ll enjoy. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when companies fall short.
Yet, these same consumers are increasingly protective of their privacy. A staggering 85% say understanding a company’s data privacy policies is crucial when making purchasing decisions, and nearly half are willing to switch brands if privacy policies are unclear, says McKinsey.
How can companies deliver tailored experiences while respecting and protecting user data?
Traditionally, personalization has relied heavily on demographic data like age, gender, and location, or basic user behaviors. For example, clicking on a pair of sunglasses—intentionally or not—might cause ads for those sunglasses to then pop up while you’re browsing online.
With stricter privacy laws and tightening industry standards, , businesses face a “cold start” problem: how to personalize experiences for users with less data.
Crossing Minds handles those significant challenges by changing the relationship between personalization and privacy. The company’s AI-driven platform enables businesses to create highly engaging, tailored customer experiences without collecting or storing personal identifiable information (PII). By focusing on behavior rather than identity, Crossing Minds helps companies make smarter recommendations, upsell and bundle products intelligently, and deliver memorable e-commerce interactions. Their AI models also allow for custom use cases, empowering businesses to build solutions specific to their needs.
For instance, when recommending movies, knowing the last three movies a customer watched or which ones they paused in the middle is far more valuable than knowing their age or location.
Crossing Minds also excels at understanding context and real-time decision-making.
“Who you are on a Tuesday morning versus a Saturday evening isn’t the same. Likewise, your behavior on Black Friday when buying for someone else is entirely different from your behavior post-holiday when shopping for yourself.”
— Alexandre Robicquet, CEO and Co-Founder, Crossing Minds
This ability to adapt recommendations based on situational behavior sets Crossing Minds apart, making personalization more intuitive and effective.
The Minds Behind Crossing Minds
Robicquet launched Crossing Minds alongside two of his academic mentors: Dr. Emile Contal, who earned a PhD in Statistical Learning from ENS Paris-Saclay, and Dr. Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor and tech pioneer known for founding Google’s self-driving car team and Google X. Together, they aimed to revolutionize recommendations by moving beyond demographic data.
The team first developed Hai, a consumer-facing app for recommending books, movies, video games, and restaurants. Recognizing a broader opportunity, they pivoted to a B2B model, helping businesses deliver personalized experiences without compromising privacy.
The founders also see applications that extend beyond product recommendations. The company is poised to become a critical player in information retrieval for large language models (LLMs), enabling these systems to process vast amounts of data generated by humans and generative AI.
Crossing Minds has earned the trust of major brands and secured funding in 2021. The platform is also the , giving merchants access to precise, tailored recommendations.
The Road Ahead: Scaling AI with a Vision
As Crossing Minds scales, its focus is on securing enterprise clients, increasing revenue, and publishing cutting-edge research to enhance its technical credibility – goals that were supported through its participation in the LIFT Labs Enterprise AI Accelerator in fall of 2024.
The company’s long-term vision extends far beyond recommendations, with plans to tackle the challenges of processing and filtering the massive amounts of data created by generative AI.
“We’re going to be inundated with information from generative AI,” Robicquet said. “Our mission is to bring empathetic understanding to the chaos—helping individuals, organizations, and LLMs cut through the noise.”
— Alexandre Robicquet, CEO and Co-Founder, Crossing Minds
As generative AI reshapes digital experiences, Crossing Minds is betting big on a future where personalization is frictionless, privacy-conscious, and deeply human.
