This Atlanta Founder Says AI Can Make Digital Content Better...And More Likely To Convert
At its core, SparkyAI! helps companies and brands figure out exactly who would buy their product and what messages would most resonate with those buyers while streamlining the content creation process.
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When I first started hearing the name Ted Tagalakis (featured photo above) around Atlanta, it was with people calling him “Mr. AI.”
Spend just a few moments talking to him and you’ll realize why. He’s passionate about the way artificial intelligence is transforming the business community and believes deeply in building better AI products.
And he’s equally as passionate about building those products in Atlanta.
Tagalakis is the founder and CEO of SparkyAI!, a startup working at the intersection of behavioral science, AI, and content creation. The platform is designed to help people and businesses generate the content that is “on brand” and “on message” for the right target audience, Tagalakis told Hypepotamus.
Building Better AI Content
At its core, SparkyAI! helps companies and brands figure out exactly who would buy their product and what content and messages would most resonate with those buyers. Users can use the platform to identify buyer attitudes, develop campaigns, create in-depth personas, and build out creative briefs, something that Tagalakis, a veteran of the marketing world, said is notoriously a “chore” for marketers.
This also helps companies move away from the generic AI content that has quickly taken over our social media feeds, blog content, and the ads we see on a daily basis.
With several provisional patents under its belt, SparkyAI! helps companies “replicate how people think,” Tagalakis said. Based on provided demographic data — including field of study, occupation, educational level, number of children at home, as well as hobbies and lived experiences — the platform generates content like email campaigns, blog content, social media posts, and ads that will resonate with targeted personas.
But unlike many other mainstream platforms in the applied AI space, SparkyAI! doesn’t just output content without context. The platform is designed to provide transparency around the posts they are suggesting. This helps take away the “black box” feeling that comes with many AI platforms and how they produce their ideas and answers.
A Focus On Focus Groups
SparkyAI! also gives users the ability to run synthetic focus groups, designed to de-risk creative ideas, ads, copy, and visuals.
Such focus groups can help a team predict campaign performance and model subconscious reactions from potential audience members without the social bias, observation bias, or researcher bias, which are all common pitfalls of traditional market research.
Building SparkyAI! In Atlanta
Tagalakis is one of a few, but growing, number of applied AI founders dedicated to building in Atlanta.
He brings 25 years of experience in the marketing and advertising space, working in digital and paid media. He said building SparkyAI! is about creating tools that he wanted at his fingertips when he was building his career as a marketer.
He brought on CTO Juan Cortes, CMO Elena Pinakatt, and Head of Growth Anya Law to to help scale the company. Over the summer he also brought on a team of interns from Georgia State and Georgia Tech, who worked out of SparkyAI!’s Atlanta Tech Village (ATV) office.
Tagalakis called ATV “rocket fuel” for the early-stage company.
While still in its early stages, SparkyAI! has made quite the impression on the Atlanta startup scene already. It was named a Top 10 Most Innovative Company for 2025 by the Technology Association of Georgia, was a Startup Atlanta Awards finalist, and was a Showcase Company at this year’s Venture Atlanta.
This week, Tagalakis will also pitch SparkyAI! At TAG’s Invest Connect event.
