consumer-advocacy
(2)
Consumer Reports
For 90 years, Consumer Reports has bought the products, broken the appliances and challenged the fine print. Now the nonprofit is teaching AI to give advice without selling the shopper.
Stanley Wei
Stanley Wei is the CEO and co-founder of Pine AI (19pine.ai), a San Francisco startup building an autonomous AI agent that fights consumers' customer-service battles for them: negotiating bills, cancelling subscriptions, disputing overcharges, and chasing refunds through real phone calls and emails. A former Chief Strategy and Operating Officer at Nasdaq-listed Agora and a former investor at Hillhouse Capital, Wei founded Pine in late 2024 after a $200 dispute with his bank ate up 90 minutes of his life. Pine raised a $25 million Series A in December 2025 and reports more than $37 million in consumer savings.