The Evolution of Retrieval-Augmented Generation

What does it take to invent a foundational AI paradigm — and then build a company to bring it to the enterprise?

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Jon Turow sits down with Douwe Kiela, co-founder and CEO of Contextual AI and the co-inventor of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). They dive into the origins of RAG, its misunderstood role in the enterprise, and how Contextual is redefining what production-grade AI systems can do. Douwe shares what most companies get wrong about RAG, why chunking shouldn't matter, how to think about hallucinations, and what founders need to know in the era of RAG agents.

Transcript: https://madrona.com/rag-inventor-talks-agents-grounded-ai-and-enterprise-impact

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction  (01:27) The Origin of RAG (04:00) Challenges and Innovations in RAG (09:49) Enterprise Adoption and Use Cases (20:46) Scaling and Innovations at Contextual AI (23:39) The Future of RAG Agents (24:43) Challenges in Enterprise Data  (26:34) Building a Research-Driven Company (27:55) The Intersection of Research and Product (32:10) Advice for Founders and AI Companies (38:14) Understanding and Addressing Hallucinations (40:50) Company Building is Harder Than You’d Think (42:00) The Importance of Evaluation in AI (44:14) Concluding Thoughts