Mashgin builds an AI-powered self-checkout kiosk that recognizes items by sight - no barcodes, no scanning, no line. The Palo Alto company uses computer vision and deep learning to ring up an entire tray of food, drinks, or merchandise in a few seconds, and is deployed in over 800 locations across stadiums, airports, convenience stores, ski resorts, and corporate cafeterias.
Abhinai Srivastava is the co-founder and CEO of Mashgin, the world's fastest AI-powered touchless self-checkout system. A data scientist by training with roots at Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, he co-founded Mashgin in Palo Alto with IIT Delhi classmate Mukul Dhankar. The company has processed over 1.5 billion transactions across 8,000+ locations - from Circle K convenience stores to Madison Square Garden - and reached a $1.5 billion valuation after a $62.5M Series B led by NEA in May 2022.
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK and behavioral economics provocateur, delivers a characteristically contrarian set of predictions for 2026. He argues that AI will initially be weaponized by tech companies and consultants as a cost-reduction tool — what he calls the 'doorman fallacy' — stripping out human value while claiming efficiency wins. Drawing on the Austrian vs. Chicago schools of economics, the history of the electric motor, and a devastating critique of self-checkout tills, Sutherland maps out three phases of AI adoption and ends with a rallying cry to marketers: stop selling what you do, and start selling how you think.