Day: September 14, 2025

• Ancestry relies on multiple large language models to run its operations.
• The company built an AI gateway to help leverage the different models.
• CTO Sriram Thiagarajan said internal AI education is important to Ancestry.

There’s a fierce battle underway in Silicon Valley, and there’s one piece of technology at the center of it all: AI.

When OpenAI released its AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, in 2022, it introduced large language models to the broader public and was embraced by business leaders. It also cast a glaring spotlight on its competitors, some of whom raced to release their own AI-powered chatbots.

The growing number of LLMs poses a tricky question for companies determining which model to use.

Sriram Thiagarajan, Ancestry’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of product and technology, told Business Insider that the company is taking a more-the-merrier approach.

“We are agnostic to LLM models,” Thiagarajan said. “We use multiple AI models. Be it Azure, OpenAI, Meta’s Lama, or offerings under Amazon Bedrock.”

For Ancestry, a Utah-based genealogy company that sells DNA test kits, the AI model’s brand is less important than the end result.

“We built an abstraction layer — what we call an AI gateway — on top that helps us leverage whatever models better fit our case,” he said. “We have built our own agentic framework in a way that helps us provide that unique family story and personalized experience for our consumers.”

Ancestry and AI

Thiagarajan said Ancestry had just begun diving into AI and machine learning when he joined the company in 2017.

At that time, Ancestry was trying to find an efficient way to digitize content, which is a massive undertaking for the company. Ancestry collects numerous forms of records, including birth, death, military, land, immigration, census, and newspapers.

“We’ve collected over 65 billion records across 80-plus countries,” Thiagarajan said. “Just to give a scale, that’s about 10,000 terabytes of data on our platform that we use to provide discoveries to our users.”

In the past, processing and identifying troves of records took months.

“About 15 or 20 years ago, when we digitized the 1940 census, it took us about nine months to do it in a manual way at 10 times the cost,” Thiagarajan said.

Then, the company embraced AI.

“We said, ‘Why don’t we apply computer vision AI techniques to automatically digitize content without manual intervention?’ Thiagarajan said. “Fast forward to the 2021 timeframe, we used our own proprietary handwriting recognition computer vision technologies, and we compressed the time to market to under nine days from nine months at a fraction of the cost.”

Still, Sriram said the company relies on humans to fact-check the AI answers “as needed.”

“We’ve built some automated controls and systems that certainly reduce the amount of time we need to spend checking,” he said. “We want to be extra careful in making sure that what we produce using AI is grounded in truth. Grounded in facts.”

These days, Ancestry is going all in on the tech — especially with its employees.

“There are a lot of things we do to drive AI education within the company,” he said. “Be it brown bag lunches, internal forums, or providing an environment where people across departments can experiment.”

Hackathons are also regular events at Ancestry and provide a space for collaboration across teams.

“So encouraging innovation as part of the flow of work, as they call it, as opposed to that residing as a silo,” Thiagarajan said.

Kathmandu – Sushila Karki, Nepal’s newly appointed interim prime minister, convenes her first government meeting today following a tumultuous week that saw her predecessor ousted amid deadly anti-corruption protests. Karki, who previously served as chief justice, took office on Friday in the wake of widespread unrest, reports 24brussels.

Karki’s inauguration marks a historic moment as she becomes Nepal’s first female prime minister. Her appointment comes after a significant period of unrest driven by discontent over corruption and nepotism within the government. The protests intensified with the youth leading the charge, demanding accountability and change in response to rising unemployment and economic disparities.

The political upheaval in Nepal began in early September when protesters mobilized against perceived elite privilege, prompted by politicians’ children flaunting their lifestyles on social media while many ordinary citizens struggled economically. The movement, initially sparked by social media campaigns, spilled into the streets, igniting the most severe social unrest in years.

Last week, the situation escalated dramatically following a government ban on numerous popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. This restriction further fueled tensions, culminating in violent protests where demonstrators set fire to key government institutions, including parliament and the Supreme Court, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, which ultimately occurred.

Background on Sushila Karki’s Appointment

Following the protests, Karki was thrust into the spotlight as an unexpected candidate capable of leading a nation in turmoil. Young protesters indicated their support for her appointment through an informal vote conducted via the messaging app Discord, reflecting a broader desire for reform.

Implications of the Ongoing Protests

With economic challenges worsening and a perceived divide deepening between the elite and the general populace, the calls for change have resonated strongly among Nepal’s youth. Analysts suggest that Karki’s leadership must address these systemic issues to stabilize the political landscape and regain public trust.

The international community is closely monitoring developments in Nepal, noting the need for concrete reforms to ensure sustainable progress and mitigate the risk of further unrest. Karki’s government will face the challenge of not only governing effectively amidst societal divisions but also fostering an environment of inclusivity and growth.