(US and Canada) Rewards app Fetch has announced the appointment of Gowtham Gundu as the company’s first-ever Chief AI Officer (CAIO). Gundu will lead Fetch’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) strategy, as the company doubles down on its AI-first approach.

As CAIO, Gundu will strategically layer ML into the Fetch platform to advance advertising personalization, enhance user product discoverability and strengthen its core receipt scanning technology. He will also explore where large language models (LLMs) and other ML innovations can unlock new platform capabilities.

“Gowtham has built ML systems that support some of the most sophisticated advertising operations in the world,” said Wes Schroll, CEO and Founder of Fetch. “He will help us take full advantage of the opportunity at our fingertips and build what others are only beginning to imagine.”

Gundu joins Fetch after more than 18 years at Google, where he most recently served as Director of Engineering for Ads Content Safety. He led teams responsible for protecting an over $250 billion advertising ecosystem, deploying ML at scale to ensure a safer, more effective user, publisher and advertiser experience. Gundu also pioneered the use of LLMs within Google Ads—work that earned multiple Ads Impact awards.

“Fetch has a bold vision for how AI can redefine not just a product, but an entire category,” said Gundu. “There’s an incredible opportunity to leverage and even advance the state-of-the-art ML to solve some of the toughest challenges in the advertising industry—and turn those breakthroughs into better experiences for users and better business outcomes for brands.”

With this move, Fetch is reinforcing its belief that AI is central to meaningful innovation and the direction of its business. In 2024, the company was awarded two U.S. patents for its AI- and ML-powered advertising technologies. Building on that momentum, this month, Fetch hosted its first-ever AI Week, pausing operations companywide to not only build AI fluency and drive platform innovation, but to signal a lasting cultural shift.