“I didn’t expect AI to show up at a local restaurant.”

Hi, I’m Matt — co-founder of CentaurAI.

My first real encounter with AI was in mid-2022, sitting across from my friend’s 17-year-old son. He was in his final year of school, and we were talking about the usual stuff: the future, exams, what he might do after graduation.

We started talking about how painful essay writing could be, and he pulled out his phone and said, “Give me a topic.” Within seconds, he’d generated a full, well-structured essay using what must’ve been an early version of the tools we now know so well.

I was stunned — not just by the speed, but the clarity.

That moment stuck with me.

No surprises, then, that I became an early adopter of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity… you name it. Like many, I was both awed and puzzled by the outputs. Some results were brilliant, some total garbage. But I kept at it.

Over time, my prompts became more like conversations. I stopped treating AI like a magic trick and started seeing it as a partner — helping me understand complex ideas, sparking creativity, even shifting how I thought.

That shift is what led me to co-found CentaurAI and to pursue a Master’s in Disruptive Technology at AcademyEX, focused on how we adopt AI not just for work, but for well-being.

Because AI isn’t just about tech — it’s about people. It’s about how we live, learn, and lead in a future where humans and machines work side-by-side.

That’s what Centaur is all about: putting people at the centre of AI adoption, one shift at a time.