Meet Frank Wang

Meet Frank Wang, CTO and co-founder of actAVA.ai

Frank Wang is the CTO and co-Founder of actAVA.ai. Before this role, he was the Principal Research Engineer at Salesforce AI Research, where he led breakthrough initiatives, including autonomous agents, deep research agents, agent orchestration, Agentforce's advanced RAG & Reasoning Engine, and several deep-research programs that transformed cutting-edge AI into market-defining products. Frank met Kevin (co-founder and CEO) back when he was employee #11 and a founding engineer at Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce in 2020). Frank is also the inventor of the award-winning Salesforce OmniStudio Mobile Platform and six vertical Industry Apps.

We used this Good News Friday Post to interview Frank about why he started actAVA, why now, and why it matters.

What was behind your original vision for actAVA.ai?

Working alongside brilliant AI researchers at Salesforce AI Research—and leading the incubation of agentic projects with early enterprise customers—I kept running into the same problem: a deep disconnect between the people building AI, the people selling AI, and the people trying to use AI.

Researchers would create something groundbreaking. Then it would take months, sometimes years, to translate that into something enterprises could actually adopt. Meanwhile, customers were stuck waiting, or worse, trying to build it themselves without the right expertise.

At actAVA, our mission is to empower enterprises to adopt AI faster and more effectively, fostering optimism about AI's transformative power.

Why do healthcare and life science companies need a set of “picks and shovels” like actAVA between them and their frontier Large Language Model? 

Primarily because healthcare faces unique challenges, including strict regulations, patient safety, and complex workflows, our solutions are tailored to address these issues, ensuring effective, compliant AI adoption. We chose healthcare deliberately, driven by the critical need for innovative solutions in a complex, high-stakes industry that demands reliable AI tools.

We also have extensive domain expertise. My co-founders, Kevin Riley and Deon Metelski, have combined over 50 years of experience in healthcare and life sciences. They understand the workflows, the regulations, and the stakes. Kevin has built and led several health tech companies, and Deon has built products that have served over 50 million lives. That knowledge is baked into everything we create.

And finally, healthcare is a slower adopter—and that's precisely why we're here. When adoption is hard, the opportunity to make a real difference is bigger. We wanted the higher challenge. If we can crack healthcare—with all its compliance requirements, patient safety concerns, and regulatory complexity—we can crack anything.

Why does your company matter now more than ever?

Agentic AI has exploded over the last two years. The technology is real, it's powerful, and it's accessible. But here's the problem: most companies lack the AI expertise, people, or resources to adopt it properly.

That's where we come in. We help organizations without dedicated AI teams move quickly and confidently—building, evaluating, and deploying agents that actually work in production. I set out to ensure any customer we worked with had access (through our platform) to my level of AI engineering, as well as to Weiran’s (co-founder and CAIO) level of AI research. I think we did it quite nicely. 

And let me be direct: for many companies, this is a do-or-die moment. The organizations that figure out how to leverage AI agents will pull ahead. The ones that don't will fall behind—fast. We want to ensure the gap doesn't come down to whether you can afford to hire a team of AI engineers and researchers.

Bonus Round: What is your prediction for the biggest AI trend impacting your customers in 2026?

I published my ten predictions for 2026 at the end of last year. Still, if I had to pick one, it would be that healthcare and life sciences will adopt AI agents faster than most people expect—especially in agent orchestration, evaluation, self-improvement, and AI compliance.

The conversation is shifting from 'Should we use AI?' to 'How do we govern it? How do we make sure it's safe? How do we prove it's working?' At actAVA, we prioritize responsible AI practices, integrating safety, compliance, and transparency into our solutions to meet the evolving needs of healthcare organizations.

Agents won't just be the most hyped technology in 2026—they'll be the most important. And the companies that figure out how to deploy them responsibly will define the next decade of healthcare.

Thanks for the time today, Frank, and the “frank conversation” around AI. See what we did there?

Meet Frank: View LinkedIn Profile