David Shim and Rachana Rele: Read AI CEO and VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe on amplifying creative work — not replacing it

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Apr 1, 2026

Guest

Rachana Rele

Guest

David Shim

Rachana Rele, VP of Product Design at Adobe, shaping AI as a creative collaborator. David Shim, CEO of Read AI, building Digital Twins to capture and act on work intelligence. They discuss AI that removes drudgery, stores team knowledge, surfaces past feedback, and automates meeting tasks. They also tackle consent, guardrails, and how AI can change workflows and company memory.

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INSIGHT

Storage Of Intelligence Becomes New Company IP

David Shim calls the near-term shift “storage of intelligence,” where all work and context are captured and become company IP for later querying.
He imagines asking aggregated questions like "what were the last 100 customer interviews" across global teams without manual hunting.

ADVICE

Use AI To Remove Drudgery Not Replace Creatives

Rachana Rele advises using AI to remove drudgery and act as an ideation partner, not to replace creative autonomy.
Adobe examples include auto-naming Photoshop layers and automating production tasks while keeping humans in control.

INSIGHT

Meeting AI Replaces Note Taker Tasks And Speeds Work

David shows meeting AI eliminates the junior note-taker role by joining calls, tracking gestures and producing richer notes.
ReadAI also automates follow-ups and CRM updates, speeding processes like deal progression by days.

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Today we have two guests from two different companies who have one shared conviction: AI works best when it amplifies people, not replaces them. Today we’re joined by Rachana Rele, VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe, and David Shim, co-founder and CEO of Read AI. Together, they’re building very different products — but they share a vision of AI that removes the drudgery from creative work and makes room for the thinking that actually matters.

In this conversation, we dig into some ideas that could genuinely change how you think about your work. David talks about this concept of “storage of intelligence” — the idea that your knowledge, your meeting history, your working style could all be captured and made available as a kind of digital twin that keeps working even when you’re not in the room. And Rachana shares how Adobe is thinking about AI not as a one-shot creative output machine, but as a collaborative partner that helps teams break out of their own blind spots.

We also push them on the harder questions — the job anxiety that’s real right now in tech, the surveillance concerns that come with recording your work life, and where they each personally draw the line.

Bios

David Shim is Co-Founder and CEO of Read AI, an AI productivity platform focused on helping knowledge workers leverage the power of AI to improve how they collaborate, communicate, and get work done. The platform provides meeting insights, search, chat, and proactive recommendations for millions of professionals, integrating seamlessly with the tools teams already use. Read AI is pioneering the concept of the Digital Twin—AI that serves as a true extension of you, built on deep contextual understanding of how you work.

Today, Read AI is trusted by teams at 90% of the Fortune 500 and in the past year, was recognized as a Top 10 AI Vendor for Enterprises by Brex, a Top 50 AI App by a16z and Mercury, and named one of Inc.’s Top 16 Companies to Watch

Before founding Read AI, David served as CEO of Foursquare and previously founded Placed, which was acquired by Snap in 2017. In 2025, he was named CEO of the Year by Geekwire.

Rachana Rele

Rachana has spent 20+ years at the intersection of technology and human experience — figuring out not just what to build, but why it matters. At Adobe, she shapes the direction of new products, nurtures ideas from zero to something real, and helps early-stage businesses find their footing and grow.

She’s also a perpetual student — currently finishing an MBA at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, with an M.Eng. in HCI from Clemson and a B.E. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Mumbai.