Founded in 2023 out of Y Combinator by Aaron Wang and John Rytel, Alex (formerly Apriora) is one of the pioneers in this category. Apriora's design follows from a single claim the founders make about the status quo: that one-way video interviews, whatever they save recruiters in time, are an insufficient screen. In their telling, a recorded answer to a fixed prompt can't be probed, so a vague or surprising response just gets captured rather than followed up on, yielding, in their words, a "limited hiring signal," and the format's lack of interaction leads some candidates to abandon it partway.

From that premise they built the opposite of a one-way tool, a live AI interviewer, "Alex," that asks real-time follow-ups, lets the exchange adapt to each answer, and is pitched as giving every applicant the same structured conversation on demand. Whether that amounts to a better experience for the candidate, rather than simply more throughput for the recruiter, is still an open question for us. The meaningful test of any AI interviewer is whether it returns something to the candidate while saving recruiters time.

The autonomy that powers Alex also defines its risk. Because the first round runs with no human present, a malfunction leaves the candidate with no one to fall back on, as a 2025 incident captured on video showed when the AI looped a phrase until the screen ended. Wang has said such failures are exceedingly rare, which at this volume is plausible but unverified. Buyers weighing Alex are weighing that trade directly: a ‘live’ conversation for every applicant on one side, but no fallback when the system fails on the other.

Still, to be fair, we’re talking about something that probably seemed far-fetched if you tried to pitch it in 2021. It’s still amazing, new technology, being perfected as we speak. As of now, in the eyes of this reviewer, and only seeing it in action as a third-party, never as a candidate, more of a promise than a game-changer, but one worth considering.