PolyAI appoints Sunil Shah as Chief Financial Officer

PolyAI has appointed Sunil Shah as Chief Financial Officer as it broadens access to its Agentic Dialogue Platform.

Shah will oversee PolyAI's global finance operations, including financial planning, accounting, treasury, and revenue operations. He will also help shape the company's capital strategy. His immediate focus will be investing in the platform to make it more accessible to customers.

The appointment brings in a finance executive with experience in software and capital markets as PolyAI expands its product offering. The company recently introduced Dialogue-RSN-1, which it describes as a reasoning model for real-time complex dialogue, and Wren, an in-platform agent designed to improve dialogue agents over time.

Shah most recently served as Senior Vice President of Finance at Rapid7. There, he led functions including FP&A, strategic finance, investor relations, and data analytics, and helped the cybersecurity software company grow annual recurring revenue from USD $300 million to USD $800 million.

Earlier in his career, he led strategic finance at Imperva and supported the company through an acquisition valued at more than USD $2 billion. Before moving into operating roles, he spent nearly a decade as a technology investor at firms including Surveyor Capital and Carlson Capital.

PolyAI sells software for building and managing dialogue-based AI agents for businesses. Its technology is used in more than a billion conversations and serves hundreds of enterprises across 25 countries and 75 languages, including Metro Bank, Marriott, PG&E, and UniCredit.

Shah said the role reflects a broader shift in how companies handle customer interactions through AI systems.

"With the advent of true dialog AI, every company needs to rethink how it engages with its customers," said Sunil Shah, Chief Financial Officer, PolyAI. "PolyAI's agentic platform is easy enough for any builder to start with, and now with Wren, is one of the most scalable dialog platforms for large enterprises to continually improve customer engagement and business outcomes."

PolyAI Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Nikola Mrkšić said the appointment supports the company's next phase of growth.

"Enterprises want a dialog platform they can build on today and grow with for years," said Nikola Mrkšić, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, PolyAI. "Sunil has helped steer software companies through the kind of growth we're heading into, and he knows the business from both sides of the table as an investor and an operator. We're thrilled to welcome him to the leadership team."

The appointment comes as businesses continue to explore AI systems that can manage more complex customer interactions. PolyAI's platform is designed to support conversations that require context, reasoning and responses in real time.

Its focus on dialogue-based applications places the company in a market where enterprises are seeking alternatives to traditional automated customer service tools. The company has continued to expand the capabilities available through its platform as organisations look for ways to deploy and manage AI agents at scale.

Dialogue-RSN-1 is intended to support more complex conversations by improving the reasoning capabilities of dialogue agents.

Wren provides tools for teams to monitor and improve agents as they handle customer interactions. Together, the products form part of PolyAI's strategy to make its technology easier to develop and operate across large organisations. Shah's finance background is expected to support investment decisions as the company expands its platform and customer base.

His experience across software companies and investment firms also gives him exposure to both operational and capital-market perspectives.

PolyAI will now look to combine its technology development with continued investment in the infrastructure and resources needed to support enterprise customers.