Ramp CEO Eric Glyman: Using AI to Build “Self-Driving Money”

Ramp, an AI-powered financial tool company, aims to automate tedious finance tasks, saving businesses time and money. Its approach emphasizes ‘zero-touch’ automation, performing tasks invisibly in the background, similar to self-driving cars, creating a more efficient and productive financial system. The company believes that AI will shift finance leaders towards more strategic and insightful roles, allowing them to focus on value creation and business growth.

Product Focus

• 00:06:56 Ramp's core product is designed to streamline company finances and automate processes. It replaces multiple financial tools with a single platform for issuing cards, managing approvals, making payments, and automating accounting. The company's vision is to create ‘self-driving money’ by automating tasks and optimizing spending, resulting in an average 5% annual expense reduction for its customers.

AI Agent Evolution

• 00:03:20 Ramp's CEO, Eric Glyman, has experience building AI agents dating back to 2015, initially focusing on price adjustment guarantees. He believes AI capabilities have expanded significantly since then, enabling more generalized reasoning and complex analyses. Glyman anticipates AI will drive financial operations through automating tasks like expense reports, accounting, and vendor negotiations.

Zero-Touch vs. Agentic AI

• 00:09:33 Ramp's approach to AI involves two paradigms: zero-touch automation and agentic AI. Zero-touch automation aims to perform tasks invisibly and automatically, such as expense reports and accounting. Agentic AI, in contrast, allows users to prompt Ramp to achieve desired outcomes, offering a more conversational interaction. Glyman foresees the eventual dominance of zero-touch AI, mirroring the evolution of self-driving cars.

AI-First User Experience

• 00:15:02 Glyman predicts a shift towards AI-first user experiences in finance and other industries. Traditional software interfaces with buttons and knobs will become less prominent, with conversational prompts driving interactions. He envisions a frictionless future where users can define desired outcomes, and the AI will handle the underlying processes.

Ramp's Culture

• 00:17:04 Ramp's culture emphasizes speed, quality, and customer obsession. AI adoption is seen as a means to enhance these attributes by automating tasks and improving efficiency. It's core to the product, enabling expense reports, faster accounting, and other benefits. The company's philosophy focuses on tackling real problems and maintaining a direct connection with customers.