A new AI-native player development platform enables casino hosts to give more personal attention to high-value customers while also identifying people likely to become the next VIPs.
The purpose-built platform unifies three signals—gaming activity, behavioral intelligence, and personalized conversations—to create a holistic player profile that continuously learns.
It communicates with players in their preferred language and can make arrangements around-the-clock for amenities such as restaurant reservations or hotel accommodations, following guidelines set by the operator. It comes from Hey Seven, a U.S.-based startup founded by three veterans of the gaming and tech industries, and was built specifically for land-based, online, and omnichannel gaming operators.
Hey Seven is an extension of the player development team, said Mikhail Gaushkin, co-founder and chief commercial and revenue officer. With its behavioral and conversational intelligence, Hey Seven goes beyond tracking individual gaming patterns to identify and engage with players whose play doesn’t quite reach the VIP status defined by metrics such as ADT.
“So much potential is lost right below that bar,” said Hey Seven CEO Tal Rubinstein, another co-founder. “The idea for us is to find those diamonds, those potential VIPs that are completely overlooked. We will catch them early, and we’ll nurture them to become that VIP.”
Gaushkin has more than 25 years of experience in marketing, analytics, and operational performance in gaming, travel, and digital marketplaces. Rubinstein was responsible for two previous start-up companies. Chief Operating Officer and co-founder Michal Lissauer has 20 years of experience as a technology operator.
Gaushkin said each operator sets “guardrails” for its Hey Seven platform, including which player segments to monitor, reinvestment parameters, communication policies, and built-in Responsible Gaming measures. Hey Seven communicates with players through text or casino app, “continuously learning from every interaction,” he continued. “It complements existing systems rather than replacing them.”
He said hosts typically handle 100 or more text messages and emails as soon as they start work, many dealing with comp requests.
When integrated with hotel, restaurant, and resort systems, Hey Seven can autonomously coordinate routine arrangements within operator-defined guardrails freeing hosts to spend more time on the floor.
“Our vision is to give every premium player host-level engagement while allowing humans to spend time that is necessary for player development (and) creating those memorable experiences,” Gaushkin said. “We’re not replacing hosts. We’re adding capacity for them to manage a lot of administrative tasks and really shine on the human side.”
Rubinstein said Hey Seven’s side of conversations with players is hyper-personalized because the agentic AI is trained to understand not only what a player does but also what motivates them and would make them return. “Our model is trained to build relationship gravity. We want to get you talking. We ask you open questions – what do you like, how’s your experience? When you speak to Hey Seven, it’s like human interaction.”
The feedback enables Hey Seven to identify signals of future player value and help operators tailor engagement and offers accordingly, Gaushkin said.
For example, the resort could notify a golf aficionado of an upcoming tournament featuring a favorite pro. Rubinstein said Hey Seven also solves the “two-market problem” of players who gamble in both land-based and online casinos. A land-based host can have a sound relationship with a top-tier player but the background that built it is undigitized and in the host’s mind; an online casino has digitized information but no personal connection. Data and insights from player interactions with Hey Seven belong to the operator, so information doesn’t leave when a host retires or changes jobs.
“It can provide highly personalized service and help identify tomorrow’s VIPs today,” Gaushkin said. “As operators expand engagement to additional segments and demonstrate the ROI, it becomes a win-win. More players receive a world-class hosted experience, including those one or two tiers below the levels traditionally supported by a human host.”
