Soundview: AI system for enhanced business knowledge

Founded in 1978, Soundview helps leaders and professionals stay up to date with the best-selling business literature. Starting with a print magazine distilling top business books, the company established its digital brand Summary.com in the mid-1990s. It provides users with 15-minute text and 30-minute audio summaries, together with a video library and webinars on business topics.

As the default website search only allows users to browse by author or book title, Soundview needed to improve the process by providing a more human-readable search functionality. In 2025, it launched a project to introduce an AI-powered tool that provides expert answers to questions based on its business book library. For this initiative, Soundview turned to us as its long-standing technology partner. 

To help Soundview deliver even greater value to professionals, we developed an AI agent capable of searching by author, title, topic, and even specific book content to surface the most relevant information and context for each user query. Powered by a purpose-built vector database, Ask Q analyzes large volumes of book summary data to generate accurate, concise responses.

For search inference, we leverage the GPT-4o model, while GPT-4o-mini handles bulk response processing, thanks to its extended context window. To answer a single query, Ask Q can process up to 40 pages of summaries in one pass. The same GPT-4o model is also used to suggest a list of related questions, enhancing the overall user experience.

We began working with Soundview in 2018, initially supporting its legacy content management system. This collaboration soon expanded into a complete website rebuild. Impressed by our strong technical expertise and deep understanding of their business, Soundview extended the partnership to include an AI initiative. Throughout the project, both teams collaborated closely, overcoming challenges and exploring innovative tools and approaches together. 

Despite Ask Q being a recent addition to Summary.com, it is already receiving overwhelmingly positive user feedback for giving professionals fast, trustworthy answers. The company has also used the tool for lead generation by making it available to trial customers. Soundview is committed to continuously enhancing Ask Q by advancing its AI capabilities, expanding its features, and ensuring it evolves with user needs.