Seez develops AI-powered technology for automotive dealerships, with its CARS AI Operating System serving as a shared intelligence layer across customer engagement, dealership operations, sales outreach, and aftersales. The company has evolved from a consumer car-discovery app into an AI-driven operating layer used across more than 2,000 showrooms in 25 countries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Seez Founder Tarek Kabrit to learn more.
Tarek Kabrit’s Background
When asked about his background and the experiences that eventually led him to Seez, Kabrit shared:
I’ve had a varied journey across finance, strategy, and startups. I started in management consulting and then moved into investment banking with Deutsche Bank in London and Dubai, working on M&A deals worth over $2 billion and advising on the region’s largest IPO at the time.
After that, I led private equity funds investing in small and medium businesses across telecom, retail, IT, and F&B. After that, I ran strategy and M&A at Yahsat, Abu Dhabi’s aerospace arm under Mubadala, where we focused on Space 2.0 activities.
What really shifted things for me was the time I spent working with venture firms and mentoring startups. Their energy and drive were contagious, and it made me realize the ultimate challenge was building something of my own.
In a startup, it is all on you, and that sense of ownership was impossible to pass up. Seez came out of that. I wanted to take everything I had learned about scaling businesses and apply it to the automotive industry, which was overdue for a better, tech-driven approach.
How Seez Started
When asked how the idea for Seez came together, Kabrit explained:
The idea for Seez started about 10 years ago when I spotted a Mini Cooper that I liked on the street but didn’t know what year it was and how much it cost.
That’s when it hit me: what if there was an app like Shazam for cars? You could snap a photo and instantly get all the info: make, model, year, and price.
I checked and realized nothing like it existed, so I decided to build it. Seez began as a mobile app doing exactly that.
We were AI-heavy from the start. With our image recognition tech and car valuations, we even built an AI chatbot that WhatsApps car sellers on your behalf and negotiates the price. That was 9 years ago, before anyone knew what AI chatbots were!
But as we grew, a bigger opportunity became clear. Consumers wanted simpler ways to navigate the car-buying process, and dealerships were looking to digitize their operations.
By the time our app reached 2.8 million users, COVID-19 accelerated the shift. More people wanted to buy cars online, and dealers needed digital tools to meet that demand.
That’s when we pivoted to focus on e-commerce solutions, helping dealerships digitize their businesses and leverage AI to enhance and automate operations.
Today, Seez is the AI operating layer for the modern dealership, giving them the tools to scale while making the car-buying experience as easy and transparent as any other e-commerce transaction.
The 35th-Floor Startup Office
When asked about his favorite memory from building Seez, Kabrit recalled:
One of my favorite memories was from our first office. I was personally funding the company at the time, so I rented a penthouse on the 35th floor in Dubai and turned the living room into our office.
My co-founder and I, along with four AI engineers, all lived and worked there.
We didn’t have desks; there was literally no furniture, so we turned the cardboard boxes from the laptops into makeshift cubicles. We had a big ping pong table in the middle, and the guys would skateboard from their bedroom to the living room.
I guess it was the Dubai version of “two guys in a garage,” just on the 35th floor. Not the best idea in retrospect, but it made for a great story.
CARS AI Operating System
When asked about Seez’s core products and features, Kabrit detailed:
The core of our strategy now is CARS, our AI Operating System. CARS grew out of Connect, our first AI-powered chatbot built specifically for the automotive market.
It was a major leap for us, as we bet early on LLMs to transform how shoppers interact with dealerships. CARS isn’t just a bolt-on tool. It acts as a shared intelligence layer across the entire dealership, built around four pillars:
- Connect is our AI that engages with customers across web, SMS, and WhatsApp. It’s hooked up to live inventory and dealership data, so it can qualify leads and book appointments automatically. It keeps every inquiry moving and makes sure no opportunity slips through the cracks.
- Assist is like an internal co-pilot for dealership staff. It helps with everything from complex finance or warranty questions to guiding teams through DMS workflows, so staff can work faster and make fewer mistakes without the need for constant training.
- Reach is our proactive sales agent. It figures out exactly when a customer is ready to buy or renew and then reaches out through their preferred channel. Instead of waiting for people to come in, it drives timely, revenue-generating engagement.
- Serve focuses on aftersales. It scans dealership records to see who’s due for maintenance or inspections, then handles scheduling and follow-ups automatically. This keeps service bays full and protects long-term revenue.
We’ve also built a strong ecosystem with SeezPad for omnichannel operations, SeezClick for online sales, and SeezBoost for AI-driven demand and lead generation.
Overcoming AI Fatigue
When asked about recent challenges in the automotive technology market, Kabrit noted:
A recent hurdle we’ve faced is “AI fatigue.” Every vendor now claims to have an AI solution, but most are just basic chatbots or surface-level automation.
Dealers are tired of fragmented tools that don’t talk to each other and require constant staff training.
We’ve overcome this by doubling down on operational AI with CARS. Instead of adding more work for the staff, we built CARS to act as a workforce multiplier.
It doesn’t just sit on top of their system. It integrates directly into the DMS and executes workflows autonomously, from qualifying leads to booking service appointments.
By moving from experimental AI to a system that directly protects margins and automates workflows, we’ve turned the tech from a cost center into a revenue driver.
In this market, if your tech doesn’t clearly save time or make money in the first 30 days, it’s just noise.
We automate repetitive tasks, respond to leads instantly, and turn existing data into real-time actions that improve conversion and efficiency. This makes the value immediate.
Ultimately, we’ve stayed focused on solving the dealer’s day-to-day problems, not adding to them.
Technology Evolution
When discussing how Seez’s technology has evolved since launching, Kabrit explained:
Our technology has evolved from a consumer tool into a suite of products that support dealerships end-to-end.
Starting with the mobile app, we gained a large user base but also quickly uncovered the real friction points in buying and selling cars. That pushed us beyond the app into marketplaces, then into full-scale SaaS solutions for dealerships.
Having built our own marketplace and sold cars ourselves, we developed first-hand insight into dealer workflows and software needs.
It has also helped us keep the customer, the car buyer, at the center, something many B2B SaaS companies lose sight of.
Along the way, we focused on identifying operational bottlenecks, not just digitizing workflows. Now, we’ve transitioned into a full AI-driven operating layer that helps dealerships run smarter and more efficiently.
We’ve gone from helping people find cars to building the system that actually powers how they’re bought and sold.
Major Company Milestones
When asked about some of Seez’s most significant milestones, Kabrit highlighted:
We were a Dubai startup that took a massive bet on AI long before it was the industry standard.
In the MENA region, startup acquisitions are incredibly rare. Honestly, the statistical odds of Seez being acquired by Pinewood.AI in February 2025 were probably lower than a college athlete making it to the NBA.
It was a huge validation of everything we’d built.
A major driver of that success was Connect, the first conversational AI purpose-built for the automotive industry.
Today, our global scale now tells the real story. Currently, we are live in 2,000+ showrooms across 25 countries, partnering with the world’s top dealer groups and Fortune 500 companies like Lithia & Driveway (NYSE: LAD).
Customer Results
When asked about measurable customer results from Seez’s technology, Kabrit said:
When we talk about success, we aren’t looking at marginal gains. We’re delivering measurable shifts that fundamentally impact a dealership’s P&L, and we’re doing it consistently across our entire global client base.
On the front end, Connect is seeing a 24% chat-to-lead conversion, while Reach has driven a 57% increase in lead-to-appointment rates.
For the service bay, Serve is generating up to 42% more repair orders every single month. These are results that go directly to the bottom line.
Internally, Assist has cut response times by 56% and reduced the time staff spend on manual communication by half.
The biggest win isn’t just the numbers. It’s freeing teams from repetitive tasks so they can focus on customers.
In this industry, that’s the difference between operating efficiently and truly competing.
Funding And Revenue Growth
When asked about Seez’s funding and revenue metrics, Kabrit shared:
As Seez, we raised over $25 million prior to the acquisition.
Revenue-wise, we’ve been tripling our revenue year over year for the past 3 years, and we don’t see that slowing down.
Trillion-Dollar Market Opportunity
When discussing the total addressable market Seez is pursuing, Kabrit explained:
As AI shifts from being a pure software layer to something that can actively perform work, we see our TAM expanding beyond the traditional 5-10% IT budget of dealerships.
Instead, we’re moving into the much larger portion of spend allocated to labor, which accounts for 40% of dealer operating costs.
Globally, that represents a trillion-dollar market opportunity.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Seez from its competition, Kabrit emphasized:
The biggest mistake our competitors make is treating AI as a “bolt-on” feature.
Most of the market is flooded with point solutions, a chatbot for the website, a separate tool for lead nurturing, and an app for service reminders. These tools don’t communicate, don’t share context, and have no visibility into actual dealership operations.
Seez is fundamentally different because we’ve built the industry’s first integrated intelligence layer.
Instead of ten different vendors with ten different logins, we provide one shared brain that sits directly inside the DMS. This allows our agents, Connect, Assist, Reach, and Serve, to act on real-time data across the entire customer lifecycle.
While our competitors are busy drafting emails for humans to send, we complete the task, booking the appointment, updating records, and triggering follow-ups automatically.
Because we are embedded in the core system, our AI does not “hallucinate” or guess. It operates within real workflows, real data, and OEM requirements.
Autonomous AI Agent
When discussing the company’s future goals, Kabrit concluded:
Looking ahead, we’re focused on pushing the boundaries of what AI can do for dealerships.
Right now, dealership staff spend hours every day on what I call “soul-crushing” admin. They are jumping between tabs, copying data from an OEM portal into a CRM, and fighting with clunky web interfaces.
It’s a massive underutilization of human talent.
One of the most exciting projects we’re working on is an autonomous AI agent that handles all of that.
Think of it as a digital teammate that can navigate any browser just like a human does. It can “see” a screen, reason through a goal, and then actually execute by clicking, typing, and managing sessions across multiple systems simultaneously.
The beauty of it is that it’s completely system-agnostic. If a human can do it in a browser, the agent can do it faster and without errors.
Our goal is to move the industry from “AI-assisted” to “AI-executed.”
It’s still early, but we see this as the next step in evolving dealership operations, turning manual, tedious work into something fully automated, intelligent, and reliable.
