Rydoo Wins Eurazeo AI Hackathon at Google with Real-Time Call Assistant

Rydoo is not new to artificial intelligence: OCR-scanning, Smart Audit, and the recently launched Policy Assistant. AI has long been part of our DNA, and there’s much more to come.

All those features, however, have one thing in common: they’re part of our product. Whilst AI is foundational to our product, it’s impact goes beyond that at Rydoo.

As we continue on the path to operating as an AI-first organisation, the way in which every team strategically utilises AI and embeds it into our operations is critical. 

Here, we tell the story of we're doing that through AI hackathons. 

Bringing AI into our workflows

AI is changing the way we work, we already know that.

The progress is breathtaking, and the competition –both among frontier models and their users– is fierce. Every day, we learn about new, innovative ways AI can make us quicker, smarter, more customer-focused. 

In this age of innovation, Rydoo’s leadership made a decision: we’re going all-in with AI.

So far, we’ve taken a series of steps to make this possible:

• We created an AI Guild, which drives AI adoption through cross-functional expertise, events, and enablement sessions.
• We adopted a martial-arts-inspired belt mastery system that gives our teams and employees feedback on their level of AI adoption.
• We introduced quick, transparent procurement processes for new AI tools.
• We brought in easy-to-understand policies visible to every employee, removing the fear around AI while ensuring compliant, responsible use.
• Last but not least, we gave all employees access to a multitude of powerful AI tools, including integrations with our existing systems.

Our AI Hackathon era

One commitment on the road to embodying AI-first culture at Rydoo was to take part in –or run– quarterly AI hackathons. With that, the first of Rydoo’s AI Guild’s initiatives was to participate in the Eurazeo AI Hackathon, which took place at Google’s Paris offices, July 9-10, 2026.

The rules of the Eurazeo AI Hackathon were simple:

1. Gather a team and solve a real business problem that can only be solved by AI.
2. The business case couldn’t be theoretical. The problem had to be based on real data, with ROI grounded in realistic projections and reasonable assumptions.

Rydoo’s team at the hackathon was cross-functional:

• From product and engineering, we had Cedric Geerinckx as technical Product Manager and Nikita Larushkin as Software Engineer.
• From the business side, we had Yousra El Galai as Product Expert from CSM, Adriaan Vanackere as Sales Executive, and myself (Adam Mazik) as Project Lead and Customer Onboarding Manager.
• From executive and leadership, we had Sebastien Marchon, Rydoo’s CEO, who was instrumental in producing and practicing the pitch we gave the jury.

It was our cross-functionality and collaboration that made the difference. We had team members specialised in different aspects of the challenge, working together like an effective micro-startup. We decided to focus on our most customer-facing team: Customer Success.

Why we focused on using AI to support Customer Success

A Customer Success Manager (CSM) is the all-rounder when it comes to product knowledge and customer interaction, whether in onboarding or retention. CSMs need both deep and broad understanding of Rydoo.

Not knowing the answer to complex questions is part of the job, and CSMs are trained to say so responsibly. But researching, escalating through official channels, and following up can take multiple rounds. Across many clients at once, it adds up to multiple hours out of a CSM’s workweek. As an onboarding manager, I knew the problem was real, and one that AI could potentially help us solve. We just needed the data to prove it.

Demonstrating ROI: time that AI could give us back

In preparation for the competition, we analysed a representative month of client-call transcripts. CSMs needed to “defer” and “circle back” in roughly a third of the 412 calls we analysed, validating our assumption.

Across the year, that translates to more than 3,000 deferred questions department-wide. Based on a survey of selected CSMs, we calculated the potential to save each CSM around 4.5 hours per week. This, across the team, adds up to a cost of more than €300,000 per year. For an AI project, the potential ROI here was huge.

‘Gotcha!’ is born: building an AI tool to support Customer Success

Our project was ambitious: we wanted to build a tool that could give CSMs real-time answers and sources during customer calls.

During the 24 hours of the AI Hackathon, our team worked tirelessly - verifying data, building, testing, and sharing feedback collaboratively. The work didn’t stop at night: while human intelligence rested, agents kept tweaking, coding, and improving ‘Gotcha!,’ getting it ready for the final-day presentation.

The presentation was a home run by Adriaan, who expertly walked the jury through the business case, implementation, and improvement plan. The demo of ‘Gotcha!,’ in which Yousra and I performed a live simulated customer call, was a success. That’s when we knew we’d hit a sweet spot.

As someone who works closely with our Customer Success team, I see how much time gets lost to questions that don't have an instant answer. What struck me about Gotcha is that AI doesn't replace the expertise, it just gets our people to the right answer faster, so they can spend their time on the client instead of the search.
Yousra El Galaï Product Expert @ Rydoo

Taking home the AI Hackathon top prize is just the beginning

Rydoo’s presentation was received with enthusiasm. Out of 17 companies, Rydoo was selected as the winner of the main prize: the Eurazeo Grand Prix, for the best and most complete project overall.

I think I speak for the entire team when I say this has been one of the best experiences of our professional lives, and we won’t let it go to waste. Of course, on behalf of the entire Rydoo team, we want to thank Eurazeo, Google, and all the other organisers for a brilliant event and an amazing opportunity. 

While this win is something to be proud of, we aren't sitting back. The team is already working on broader implementation of ‘Gotcha!’ for further tests and rollout, first within CSM and later across other teams, applying the same practical, process-first approach finance leaders described in what it actually takes to implement AI in a finance team. Beyond making ‘Gotcha!’ easily installable and perfecting existing functionality, we plan to keep building on it - not just for cost savings, but for revenue creation too.

This AI Hackathon was just another building block on the road to embedding AI within our culture and we’re very proud of the collective human effort that stood behind making this a success.