Oxylabs is undergoing massive expansion. But you're not a consumer brand, so most people don't really understand the business. How do you explain what Oxylabs does and where the growth is coming from?

It's easiest to understand when you look at how it makes consumer life easier. If you're shopping for a new TV or a charger, you'll likely compare options online first. Immediately, you see prices, features, and reviews from multiple sellers in one place. In that split second, our tools scour online shops, find relevant products, and return data on them.

The same goes for other online services. Whether you are looking for flight tickets or talking with an AI chatbot, there is a decent chance our infrastructure is doing the heavy lifting to deliver the answers.

Essentially, we help to make the Internet more manageable. Like Google Search but on a scale for digital businesses – we handle 5 or 6 times more requests every second. You could say we're like Google for businesses who want to be the next Google in their own industry.

This means that everyone needs us, so to meet the demand we keep hiring and expanding our product portfolio. Just last year we welcomed 200 new professionals to our ecosystem and acquired ScrapingBee, a French Web Scraping API company, loved by developers.

How much of your growth is due to the AI wave?

Companies across all industries need more and more data, and they need it faster to stay competitive. It goes for AI, of course, but also for e-commerce, travel, cybersecurity, and many others.

Few providers can meet the scale and complexity of their demands, and we're built to deliver at that level. That's why, across Fortune 500 companies, half or more of the top 10 players in some categories are our clients.

That said, focusing on AI has really paid off. We had a 100% year-over-year revenue growth month just recently, and our annual revenue growth is also approaching triple digits.

But what allowed us to take advantage of this wave is that it's not our first. We have more than a decade's worth of infrastructure building and knowledge gathering. A year ago, the amount of data flowing through our infrastructure was already what few could handle. Since then, it has increased 4 times. And we added 50 patents, now totaling over 160.

AI companies can't rely on you as a provider if you can't scale fast. They will have projects that start with volume and speed requirements no one has ever heard of before and then ask you to double or triple it.

And solving current problems isn't enough to be their long-term partner. AI developers need to trust that you have the know-how to tackle the problems of tomorrow.

That's why when the AI race started, there was hardly any race to serve them in our industry. Most players didn't qualify.

You recently stepped into the group CEO role. What's the vision you're building towards?

That's another sign of expansion – the new CEO is taller. Oxylabs' vision has always been to make public web data easier to access and use at scale. Public web data is a shared resource, and if you have good ideas on how to turn it into tools, services, or research that benefit society, it shouldn't matter where you are from or what your company size is. Driven people should be given a chance to be data-driven.

I believe that there's no limit to what we can achieve in this area. I want us to be a household name, synonymous with web data access on scale.

As a leader, I value honesty and just being human in the workplace. We want to work where everyone is comfortable being who they are, talking straight no matter the job title and even laughing at themselves. Here I lead by example; I don't shy away from admitting when I'm wrong and laughing about it. And still, we are professional and ambitious – we talk the talk and walk the walk.

Hiring, acquisitions, investments – what's on your radar next?

We are always on the lookout for new talent and offer great opportunities for those who want to help build the digital economy of the future. The time and effort we invest in patenting is also to reward them. Many companies have smart people. We make sure that they get recognized for their inventiveness while we secure a business advantage.

Growing through acquisition isn't our primary strategy. While we remain open to opportunities that make strategic sense, our main goal is to drive growth through product development. By creating better products, we attract more customers, which in turn leads to more new positions opening and more hiring. We hire globally, from the U.S. West Coast to East Asia. Talents and technology are what keep us leading the market.

Looking ahead, we have a busy summer planned – traveling around the globe, meeting clients, and preparing for OxyCon 2026, the biggest event in our industry, which we'll be hosting in September. And the new CEO should not be the last big announcement from us this year. So, as influencers say, "like and subscribe for more".