Salient: The Fintech Startup Processing $1B+ in Loans with AI

Ari Malik and Mukund Tibrewala started Salient after seeing firsthand, during Ari's time at Tesla, how expensive and outdated loan servicing really was. What began as a side project—automating outbound calls with voice AI—quickly evolved into something bigger: a fully integrated, AI-powered loan servicing platform built for both fast-moving non-bank lenders and some of the largest banks in the U.S. In this conversation, Salient's co-founders share how a single cold email and a Steve Jobs–voiced demo landed Salient its first major customer. They talk about moving across the state to sit next to that customer until they were live, scaling from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of daily calls, and navigating one of the most complex regulatory landscapes in tech. Salient now processes billions in loans, serves millions of borrowers, and just raised a $60 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz—all with a team of 10 engineers. This is the story of how they did it. Learn more about Salient at https://www.trysalient.com. Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply Chapters: 00:22 - What Salient Does 01:03 - Early Beginnings at Tesla 01:26 - Leveraging AI for Loan Management 01:51 - Scaling with Open Source Models 02:15 - The Impact of LLAMA 2 02:39 - The Magic Demo and First Big Customer 03:12 - Cold Emails and Westlake Financial 05:02 - Relentless Customer Focus 05:35 - Forward Deployed Engineer Playbook 06:19 - Scaling with a Small Team 07:13 - Hiring for Growth 07:47 - Challenges in Scaling Voice AI 08:24 - Navigating Regulations and Compliance 08:56 - Future Vision for Salient