Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.
If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:
Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.
Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.
Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.
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Before we jump into the regular news, a few housekeeping items:
Upcoming AITX Events:
Future of AI in Policy & Law: Wednesday, September 3 | sign up here!
Austin AITX Monthly Meetup: Tuesday, September 23 | sign up here!
Hack AI: Wednesday, September 10 | sign up here!
To stay in the loop on all our monthly meetups and other community organized events, subscribe to our AITX calendar here.
Check out our Community Directory:
Where you can fill out your profile and find other members of the AITX community. If you haven’t filled out your profile yet, please follow the link HERE and submit your information.
🎙 Episode 2 is Live 🎙
Our second episode is with Jade Wang, an engineer, startup founder, hacker house pioneer, and prolific angel investor.
This conversation spans Jade's personal journey immigrating to the US and learning to program at a young age, her experiences running legendary Bay Area hacker houses, how she got started building developer community at Meteor, her eventual founding of Sandstorm and subsequent acquistion by Cloudflare, as well as her approach to angel investing, her views on the evolution of startups in the AI era, and the role of intuition, agency, and empathy in building technology and the future.
Check it out 👇
Pitch Your Idea
ATX’s Ultimate Pitch Battle + Social hits downtown Austin on September 24th.
Founders can win $5k cash, $20k in AI services and 1 month of a free developer.
No fees or equity, just your best idea. Apply with a Loom video by September 4th.
Check it out 👉 HERE
In this week’s edition you’re getting:
🤠 Austin Meetup Recap
5 Upcoming Events
3 AI Community Stories
1 Community Highlight
So let’s jump in!
AITX Community Austin Meetup Recap
Austin AITX Community Monthly Meetup | August 2025
We had 4 amazing demos this month
Twilio demoed ConversationRelay, a drop-in voice adapter for AI agents. It handles the real-time call plumbing—speech-to-text, text-to-speech, low-latency streaming, interruptions, and session management—so you keep your own agent logic while it makes phone conversations feel instant and reliable
Augment builds “Augie,” an AI teammate for shippers, brokers, and carriers that can call, email, log into systems, and execute end-to-end logistics workflows so humans can focus on relationships and decisions. It adapts to your SOPs, collaborates over email/Slack/Teams/SMS/phone, and continuously builds a knowledge base to speed tasks like POD collection and track-and-trace
GigHQ is an AI-powered job-search copilot built to cut through ghost jobs and bot-cluttered postings. It analyzes real-world hiring signals (ghost rates, competitiveness, time-to-reply), tracks applications like a personal CRM, and includes free tools like resume scoring and a cover-letter generator.
VSTRAT is a structured, computer-aided strategy platform—“like Bloomberg for strategists”—that blends GenAI with interactive, research-backed frameworks. Teams use tools for SWOT, value chains, customer journeys, and Blue Ocean Strategy to turn complexity into clear, collaborative plans used in enterprises and leading schools
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: Wednesday, September 3 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM CST
Where: Register to see address
What: Join AITX and The AI Innovation & Law Program at Texas Law for an insightful meetup exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping public policy and the legal profession.
When: Tuesday, September 2 | 7:00 - 9:00 pm CST
Where: Capital Factory 8th Floor Captain America 701 Brazos Street Austin, TX 78701
What: An exclusive panel featuring top graduates from Gauntlet AI's Cohort One and recently graduated Cohort Two - elite practitioners who stand at the very tip of the spear in AI-first development.
When: Tuesday, September 9 | 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST
Where: ACC - RGC 3000 1218 West Avenue · Austin, TX
What: New updates, lightning talks, showcase + hands-on lab
💻 Hack AI
When: Wednesday, September 10 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory Austin, Texas
What: A monthly session for builders all over the Austin area to learn about and build the latest AI technology.
When: Wednesday, September 3 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX
What: Eddy Hernández, AI Builder • 2x Founder • Computer Science Graduate now working at the edge of AI automation with n8n—a breakthrough platform for creating AI agents without code.
COMMUNITY STORIES
Texas AG Ken Paxton opened an investigation into Meta’s AI and Character.AI over claims their chatbots implied real mental-health support for minors and mishandled data. The probe centers on deceptive advertising and privacy risks
Why it matters: Expect tighter guardrails on any AI marketed to minors. TX builders will need crystal-clear labeling, consent flows, and no clinician impersonation
Need-to-know:
Texas issued Civil Investigative Demands to assess potential violations of consumer protection and privacy laws.
Meta and Character.AI say their bots are labeled as AI, not licensed therapists, and include disclaimers steering users to qualified help.
The move tracks a broader wave of scrutiny of AI and kids’ safety at the state and federal level.
Learn more here
Austin-based Loman AI closed a $3.5M seed led by Next Coast Ventures (with TenOneTen and Antler) to scale its voice agent that answers calls, takes orders/reservations, and syncs with POS/reservation systems. The company says restaurants see up to 22% more revenue from recaptured calls and upsells, while trimming labor costs.
Why it matters: Another homegrown voice-AI win signals real traction for applied AI in service ops—and more local hiring and integration work for Austin’s ecosystem.
Need-to-know:
Round: $3.5M seed (Aug 26, 2025) led by Next Coast Ventures; investors include TenOneTen Ventures and Antler
Product: AI phone agent handles pickup/delivery orders, reservations, FAQs; plugs into leading POS/res systems
Scale & impact: Millions of calls and tens of millions in order volume to date; up to 22% revenue lift and 17% labor-cost reduction reported
Learn more here.
Berkshire-owned McLane Company opened a new Austin tech hub to accelerate AI initiatives and grow its IT&D org—supporting ~100 teammates across cyber, data, AI, and cloud engineering. The hub taps Austin’s talent to push digital supply chain and customer-experience projects
Why it matters: Enterprise logistics is betting big on Austin. More local AI jobs, vendor opportunities, and real-world deployments in supply chain
Need-to-know:
Led by Chief Information & Digital Officer Murat Genc, who says investments in cloud, data, and AI lay a “future-ready” foundation for logistics, retail, and food service.
Space is designed for collaboration and supports ~100 roles spanning cyber, data, AI, and cloud engineering.
McLane is expanding senior hires across data/AI, cybersecurity, and retail/supply-chain platforms to power the strategy.
Learn more here.
COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT
This week, we’d like to highlight Sudhish KR, founder of HRHouz.
He brings 15+ years of experience in Product Development, Software Engineering, and Research, having led AI/ML & Infra software initiatives at high-growth startups and Fortune 100 companies. He also holds a Master’s in Computer Engineering from UCSB and is an alumnus of Y Combinator’s Startup School and Antler.
As founder of HRHouz, Sudhish is passionate about transforming hiring through AI-powered recruiting tools. He also volunteers with CodePath and CodeTenderloin, helping individuals upskill and launch careers in tech.
Here’s a bit about HRHouz
HRHouz’s flagship product, AI-Driven Reference Checks, is reshaping hiring industry by giving Employers deep, data-driven insights into a candidate’s culture fit, strengths, and trustworthiness.
They have an upcoming launch of their AI-Powered Talent Hub (currently in beta), which is designed to handle the challenge of high-volume resume inflow. It uses uses advanced AI to filter, rank, and shortlist top candidates
The mission of HRHouz is to give employers a defensive hiring advantage with smarter insights, deeper evaluations, and more meaningful hiring decisions.
His ask from the community:
HRHouz is looking to connect with:
Companies actively hiring and interested in building a smarter, more efficient hiring pipeline
VCs or investors passionate about HR tech and AI-driven recruiting solutions
Advisors or networks who can facilitate introductions and help expand HRHouz’s reach
To learn more, get early access to the AI-Powered Talent Hub beta, or explore AI-Driven Reference Checks, visit hrhouz.com or contact them at [email protected].
That’s all for now, folks!
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