Code Story episode
S11 E20: The Death of the Black-Box Algorithm: Transitioning from Rigid Rules to Fully Autonomous, "Glass-Box" Contextual AI Pricing with Alex Halkin, Founder & CEO of Competera AI
Oct 7, 2025 · Season 11 · Episode 20 · 27 min
The pricing consultant you wish you had - using AI
Alex Halkin can't remember a time where he wasn't doing tech. Funny enough, he does remember a time before internet was common place. In 6th or 7th grade, he got a computer and immediately disassembled it. And eventually, he built an internet service provider for his community, eventually dropped out of university, and sold his internet provider. Outside of tech, he has always been into sports - cycling, motorcycles, etc. And though he doesn't have much time for it anymore, he is big into Brazilian Jujitsu.
At his old role, Alex started to pitch subscription pricing for their products. The timing wasn't right for deep machine learning for pricing, so his boss turned him down. Several years later, he and his team are leveraging the power of Contextual AI to calculate and optimize price combinations.
This is the creation story of Competera AI.
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https://competera.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhalkin/
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