About

Operators who build AI, not a lab that discovered distribution

Before ChukAI, our team spent years working alongside industrial distributors and private equity owners on pricing, growth strategy, operations, and value creation. ChukAI is what we built once AI made that work possible at transaction scale.

Why this team

Industrial distribution

Distributor pricing, ERP environments, branch operations, supplier programs, and the frontline behavior that decides whether a price holds.

Private equity value creation

Value-creation plans, sponsor reporting, add-on integration, and the operating discipline a hold period demands.

AI and engineering

The machine learning, data engineering, and systems work that turns a messy ERP extract into intelligence a sales manager will actually act on.

Team

The people accountable for your outcome

Jack Lyden

Co-Founder & CEO

Jack drives the business – strategy, customers, and the outcomes ChukAI signs up for. He began in strategy consulting at EY-Parthenon and New Heights Research, advising private equity firms on commercial due diligence and growth strategy across manufacturing and industrial services – supporting more than 100 niche industrial businesses. He went on to invest at Fractal Software, launching and scaling vertical SaaS companies, and led business operations, go-to-market strategy and business development at Shiftsmart.

Chris Laham

Co-Founder & CTO

Chris builds the data and machine learning systems ChukAI runs on. He engineered retail lending analytics and drove critical workstreams for the BBVA data migration at PNC Bank post-acquisition, built congenital disease screening software at Revvity, and worked on enterprise security with the global cyber group at Sherwin-Williams – a vertically integrated distributor in its own right. All environments where getting the data wrong was not an option. He taught himself to code after starting out in mortgage banking.

Oliver

Distribution Expert

Also known as Mr. Green. A four-year-old English Cream Golden Retriever from Villa Park, Illinois, Oliver has sat in on more than 50 interviews with HVAC and refrigeration contractors, which makes him our longest-serving voice-of-customer researcher. He relocated to New York at six months old and now specializes in long walks, soft landings, and protecting the office from rogue delivery people.

How we work commercially

Our incentives are aligned to your P&L

Customers hire ChukAI to deliver outcomes, not software usage. Our commercial models are structured accordingly, and we discuss them openly in a first conversation.

Backing

ChukAI is backed by Forum Ventures and Right Side Capital, and built in New York City.

Talk to ChukAI