Read AI is releasing a ‘Digital Twin’ that can answer work emails and schedule meetings

Seattle startup Read AI has launched a new “Digital Twin” product that works via email and can help schedule meetings, answer questions, and keep conversations flowing.

The AI ​​bot, called “Ada,” builds on the company’s existing assembly and manufacturing tools. Read AI claims it is the largest deployment of a digital twin product to date.

Digital Twin enters a crowded market of AI agents and workplace pilots from giants like Microsoft and Google, as well as startups offering AI-driven scheduling, inbox selection and autonomous task management. Read tries to differentiate by putting the agent at the center of the email, tightly linking it to the meeting and document context, and offering corporate marketing such as a custom name and company domain to customers with 25 or more licenses.

Here’s how it works. Users cc ada@read.ai in the thread and can ask it to find time in everyone’s calendars, draft answers, or answer questions using the context of their meetings, email, files, CRMs and other connected systems. Read says its platform originates from more than 20 native integrations and, on average, about 10,000 documents per user.

For anything more than editing, Ada’s “sidebars” have the user first, suggesting draft responses and waiting for approval before sending them, and should be included in the email thread where they take action. The idea is to let AI cover for you when you’re too busy or out of the office, while giving you veto power over anything critical or important.

AI manager David Shim likened Digital Twin to OpenClaw, an open source AI tool for digital assistants that works with messaging apps and has been gaining momentum this month. “What OpenClaw did for tinkers, Digital Twin brings to the masses,” he told GeekWire.

Shim positioned the launch as an evolution from an “AI assistant” to something closer to a software partner that can act on your behalf. In an internal beta, he said a quarter of user interactions with Ada were “thank you,” a sign that people are treating the product as a partner rather than a tool.

He said the introduction of the Digital Twin changes Read AI from a “production record setting” to an “extension of you.”

“This is a time when we’re changing the way we interact with AI, from pulling to pushing, where the agent works for you,” he said.

More broadly, Shim is betting that digital twins — and AI assistants more broadly — will proliferate.

“If I said internet access was a human right 20 years ago, I’d be laughed out of the room — today, it’s the expected value,” he said. “We believe that the digital twin will be a human right, like access to the Internet, in the next few years, leveling the playing field when it comes to AI and productivity.”

Founded in 2021 by Shim, Robert Williams, and Elliott Waldron, Read AI has raised over $80 million and acquired large enterprise customers for its cross-platform AI meeting assistant and productivity tools. It has 5 million active users.