Michael Fester

Founder and product/engineering leader in privacy‑focused voice AI: Michael co‑founded Snips, which built on‑device voice/NLU technology that emphasized privacy by processing voice locally. Snips was acquired by Sonos in 2019 and the team/IP contributed to Sonos' voice efforts — this sale and the project's focus establish him as an early practitioner of privacy‑first, edge AI for consumer devices. voicebot+1

Builder of docs-to-agent and support infrastructure: After Motif (collaborative docs) Michael co‑founded and open‑sourced Markprompt and then 14.ai to productize the idea of embedding company knowledge into AI agents for customer support. His work demonstrates a consistent focus on indexing, embeddings, API‑first design, and practical agent workflows for scaling support. idratherbewriting+2

Roots in math and HCI inform product and technical judgment: Michael started a Ph.D. in number theory at Cambridge and earlier worked on HCI/product experiments such as 8pen — that mix of deep technical training and design/product experimentation shows in projects that balance rigorous technical infrastructure (embeddings, agent flows) with attention to UX. michaelfester+1

Active open‑source maintainer and engineer: Michael maintains several public repositories (Markprompt/Motif-related repos and personal utility projects) and uses GitHub/X to announce releases and product updates — indicating hands‑on engineering leadership and an open approach to product engineering. github+1