Not just an acquisition, a transformation.
Eric Vaughan, CEO
There's a specific kind of uncertainty that comes when a company doesn't know what its future holds.
Most companies take quarters to do this. We did it with speed, depth and structure.
Long-term planning stalls. Investment slows. Teams focus on maintaining what exists rather than building what’s possible. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s simply what happens when stability is missing.
Eight months ago, that changed. Khoros found a permanent home with IgniteTech. No more transition. No more waiting. Just a clear path forward and a team finally able to focus on what matters most: delivering for customers.
There’s a specific kind of uncertainty that comes when a company doesn’t know what its future holds.
Long-term planning stalls. Investment slows. Teams focus on maintaining what exists rather than building what’s possible. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s simply what happens when stability is missing.
In May, 2025, that changed. Khoros found a permanent home with IgniteTech. No more transition. No more waiting. Just a clear path forward and a team finally able to focus on what matters most: delivering for customers.
Stability isn’t boring. Stability is what lets you build.
Here’s what we built.
And then there’s the story that changed our trajectory. When X removed its API from our Care and SMM products, our AI team built Iris® AI—a fully functional social listening and posting tool—and shipped it to customers for free, in under 10 days. Not a prototype. A working product, deployed in production, solving a real crisis for real customers. That fire drill proved something we couldn’t ignore: if an AI-native team could build and ship that fast, there was no reason to keep patching legacy code. So we made the call—use the same AI-first approach to completely reimagine and rewrite our Care and Social Media Management products from the ground up. Not incremental upgrades. A full rebuild, merging two separate products into one unified platform. That work is now underway.Where We Started
Like any established platform with a long history, Khoros had accumulated technical debt and operational challenges over the years. Support resolution times had room to improve. The engineering backlog needed attention. AI capabilities were underutilized. Platform reliability could be stronger.
We saw this clearly, and we saw the opportunity to address it systematically.
Every capability we’ve built was validated with our customers. We’re delivering a stable foundation that replaces uncertainty with clarity and speed.
So we got to work.
Support That Actually Supports
When we started, customers were waiting an average of 40 days for support resolution. In a world where social media crises unfold in minutes, that wasn’t good enough.
We fixed it.
The numbers:
Closed 9,000+ support tickets while doubling weekly throughput (from 250 to 400 tickets/week), reducing average resolution time by 60%. Also, consolidated 20+ previously scattered request types (handled via separate emails, internal systems, and success teams) into a unified support portal with new self-service automations.
Resolved more than 900 product issues, including 500+ bugs, 270+ security vulnerabilities, and 100+ high-priority accessibility issues, while reducing the engineering backlog by 82%.
Over the last 3 months, we achieved 97% less downtime and 81% faster incident recovery.
But speed alone wasn’t enough. We needed to fundamentally change how support works.
The AI transformation:
Our AI resolution rate jumped from 5% to 60%. That’s not incremental improvement. That’s a 12x transformation. Today, 4,000+ tickets have been solved by AI without any human intervention. We built 70+ intelligent automations. We created 140+ knowledge base articles that power instant, accurate answers around the clock.
What does this mean for customers? When you need help at 3 AM, you get it. When your question is straightforward, you get an answer in seconds, not weeks. And when you need human expertise for something complex, our agents are available because they’re not buried in routine requests.
AI that resolves 60% of tickets isn’t replacing humans. It’s freeing them.
The Transformation in Numbers
Eight months later, here’s where we stand:
| Metric | Result / Impact |
|---|---|
| Support Resolution Time | 40 → 17 days (60% faster) |
| Support Throughput | 250 → 400 tickets/week (60% increase) |
| Support AI Resolution Rate | 5% → 60% (12× improvement) |
| Support Tickets Solved by AI | 4,000+ |
| Engineering Backlog | 930 → 169 (82% cleared) |
| Product Accessibility Issues Resolved | 100+ |
| Product Security Issues Resolved | 270+ |
| Platform Downtime | 97% reduction |
| Incident Recovery Speed | 81% faster (5× improvement) |
| IRIS Build Time | 10 days |
These aren’t aspirations. They’re results.
The 10-Day Story
This is the story that shows what we’re capable of.
In July 2025, Khoros and X engaged in negotiations to extend API access, but ultimately no commercially reasonable terms emerged. As soon as that became clear, and knowing this infrastructure change threatened to disrupt social media operations for Khoros customers, we went to work.
In under 10 days, we built the IRIS X/Twitter integration from concept to production. Full social listening. Full posting capabilities. Zero customer downtime.
Ten days. Production-ready, so our customers kept operating without interruption.
That’s not just a story about engineering speed. It’s a demonstration of what becomes possible when a team has the stability to commit fully to its customers.
Keeping Khoros' Presence Felt
Since acquisition, we’ve proudly sponsored and participated at London Community Week, Customer Engagement Summit, and Toronto Community Week.
Khoros’ presence was not only felt, it was also seen as we sponsored a multitude of additional parts and pieces — along with being Sponsors of the events themselves.
Khoros will continue to be part of the Communities conversation, participating at industry events and opportunities throughout 2026.
A Permanent Home
All of this was possible because of one fundamental change: stability.
We made strategic decisions to optimize operations and create a sustainable foundation. We focused resources where they matter most. Not because we were cutting corners, but because we were building a base that could support real, sustained investment in innovation.
Khoros is no longer in transition. There’s no uncertainty about the future. There’s a clear roadmap, a committed team, and a foundation built for the long term.
This is what happens when a product stops surviving and starts thriving.
What's Next
This foundation isn’t the destination. It’s the launchpad.
The stability we’ve built enables everything that comes next. Aurora’s AI-Powered Community Intelligence Suite delivers capabilities like the Answer Assist and AI Moderation that transform how communities operate. Both are powered by a new foundation we call the Community Language Model, an intelligence layer that learns from your specific community, not the generic internet.
Our philosophy is simple: AI should elevate humans, not replace them.
Answer Assist: No Question Left Behind
The Answer Assist solves the unanswered question problem, but it does so thoughtfully. We could have built an AI that answers every question instantly. We didn’t. Because premature AI answers erode trust and discourage the human participation that makes communities valuable.
Instead, we built an AI that waits.
The Answer Assist only provides AI answers after a configurable threshold, typically 24 to 48 hours, and only if no qualified human response exists. This preserves community-first engagement. Your members still help each other. The AI is the safety net, not the first responder.
The best AI answer is still second-best to a great human answer. That’s why we wait.
AI Moderation: Protection at Scale
Content moderation has always forced an ugly choice. Pay for expensive human review that can’t scale, or rely on unreliable AI that misses context and nuance.
Aurora’s AI Moderation System combines both, and it does so transparently.
We’re replacing dependency on legacy spam filtering with a system that’s not only more accurate and cost-effective, but also transparent and configurable.
Iris® AI. Every Channel, One View
Iris® AI will support the channels your customers actually use:
- Facebook: Posts, Messenger, comments, ads
- X/Twitter: Tweets, DMs, mentions
- Instagram: Posts, stories, reels, DMs
- LinkedIn: Company updates, articles
- WhatsApp: Business messaging
- YouTube: Video engagement
- Google: Business Messages
- SMS: Text messaging
Organic content. Paid ads. Direct messages. Reviews. All unified in a single view with complete context.
Publishing and Moderation
IRIS® AI will include platform-native publishing and moderation capabilities. AI-powered spam filtering catches issues before they reach your audience. Explainable moderation outcomes help your team understand every decision. Publisher preview workflows ensure quality control before content goes live.
Enterprise-Grade Security
Iris® AI is being built for enterprise deployment from day one. SSO with SAML. Two-factor authentication. Multi-tenant isolation. Role-based access controls. Controlled onboarding with admin approval. Complete audit trails for compliance.
Enterprise customers need AI they can trust. Iris® AI delivers modern AI capabilities without compromising security or compliance.
The best product innovations happen when teams aren’t worried about what comes next quarter. They happen when there’s trust, stability, and the freedom to think long-term.
Stability isn’t the destination. It’s the launchpad.
Just Getting Started
These results happened because our team could finally focus on building instead of wondering what comes next. When uncertainty becomes clarity, transformation becomes possible.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished together. And we’re nowhere near done.
The best is yet to come.
Have questions or want to learn more? Reach out to us at khoros@ignitetech.ai
Read where this journey began: IgniteTech acquired Khoros to rebuild it. Here’s what that looks like.
Eric Vaughan CEO, IgniteTech & Khoros
There’s a specific kind of uncertainty that comes when a company doesn’t know what its future holds.
Long-term planning stalls. Investment slows. Teams focus on maintaining what exists rather than building what’s possible. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s simply what happens when stability is missing.
Eight months ago, that changed. Khoros found a permanent home with IgniteTech. No more transition. No more waiting. Just a clear path forward and a team finally able to focus on what matters most: delivering for customers.
Stability isn’t boring. Stability is what lets you build.
Here’s what we built.
And then there’s the story that changed our trajectory. When X removed its API from our Care and SMM products, our AI team built IRIS—a fully functional social listening and posting tool—and shipped it to customers for free, in under 10 days. Not a prototype. A working product, deployed in production, solving a real crisis for real customers. That fire drill proved something we couldn’t ignore: if an AI-native team could build and ship that fast, there was no reason to keep patching legacy code. So we made the call—use the same AI-first approach to completely reimagine and rewrite our Care and Social Media Management products from the ground up. Not incremental upgrades. A full rebuild, merging two separate products into one unified platform. That work is now underway.Where We Started
Like any established platform with a long history, Khoros had accumulated technical debt and operational challenges over the years. Support resolution times had room to improve. The engineering backlog needed attention. AI capabilities were underutilized. Platform reliability could be stronger.
We saw this clearly, and we saw the opportunity to address it systematically.
Every capability we’ve built was validated with our customers. We’re delivering a stable foundation that replaces uncertainty with clarity and speed.
So we got to work.
Support That Actually Supports
When we started, customers were waiting an average of 40 days for support resolution. In a world where social media crises unfold in minutes, that wasn’t good enough.
We fixed it.
The numbers:
Closed 9,000+ support tickets while doubling weekly throughput (from 250 to 400 tickets/week), reducing average resolution time by 60%. Also, consolidated 20+ previously scattered request types (handled via separate emails, internal systems, and success teams) into a unified support portal with new self-service automations.
Resolved more than 900 product issues, including 500+ bugs, 270+ security vulnerabilities, and 100+ high-priority accessibility issues, while reducing the engineering backlog by 82%.
Over the last 3 months, we achieved 97% less downtime and 81% faster incident recovery.
But speed alone wasn’t enough. We needed to fundamentally change how support works.
The AI transformation:
Our AI resolution rate jumped from 5% to 60%. That’s not incremental improvement. That’s a 12x transformation. Today, 4,000+ tickets have been solved by AI without any human intervention. We built 70+ intelligent automations. We created 140+ knowledge base articles that power instant, accurate answers around the clock.
What does this mean for customers? When you need help at 3 AM, you get it. When your question is straightforward, you get an answer in seconds, not weeks. And when you need human expertise for something complex, our agents are available because they’re not buried in routine requests.
AI that resolves 60% of tickets isn’t replacing humans. It’s freeing them.
The Transformation in Numbers
Eight months later, here’s where we stand:
| Metric | Result / Impact |
|---|---|
| Support Resolution Time | 40 → 17 days (60% faster) |
| Support Throughput | 250 → 400 tickets/week (60% increase) |
| Support AI Resolution Rate | 5% → 60% (12× improvement) |
| Support Tickets Solved by AI | 4,000+ |
| Engineering Backlog | 930 → 169 (82% cleared) |
| Product Accessibility Issues Resolved | 100+ |
| Product Security Issues Resolved | 270+ |
| Platform Downtime | 97% reduction |
| Incident Recovery Speed | 81% faster (5× improvement) |
| IRIS Build Time | 10 days |
These aren’t aspirations. They’re results.
The 10-Day Story
This is the story that shows what we’re capable of.
In July 2025, Khoros and X engaged in negotiations to extend API access, but ultimately no commercially reasonable terms emerged. As soon as that became clear, and knowing this infrastructure change threatened to disrupt social media operations for Khoros customers, we went to work.
In under 10 days, we built the IRIS X/Twitter integration from concept to production. Full social listening. Full posting capabilities. Zero customer downtime.
Ten days. Production-ready, so our customers kept operating without interruption.
That’s not just a story about engineering speed. It’s a demonstration of what becomes possible when a team has the stability to commit fully to its customers.
Keeping Khoros' Presence Felt
Over the last eight months, we’ve proudly sponsored and participated at London Community Week, Customer Engagement Summit, and Toronto Community Week.
Khoros’ presence was not only felt, it was also seen as we sponsored a multitude of additional parts and pieces — along with being Sponsors of the events themselves.
Khoros will continue to be part of the Communities conversation, participating at industry events and opportunities throughout 2026.
A Permanent Home
All of this was possible because of one fundamental change: stability.
We made strategic decisions to optimize operations and create a sustainable foundation. We focused resources where they matter most. Not because we were cutting corners, but because we were building a base that could support real, sustained investment in innovation.
Khoros is no longer in transition. There’s no uncertainty about the future. There’s a clear roadmap, a committed team, and a foundation built for the long term.
This is what happens when a product stops surviving and starts thriving.
What's Next
This foundation isn’t the destination. It’s the launchpad.
The stability we’ve built enables everything that comes next. Aurora’s AI-Powered Community Intelligence Suite delivers capabilities like the Answer Assist and AI Moderation that transform how communities operate. Both are powered by a new foundation we call the Community Language Model, an intelligence layer that learns from your specific community, not the generic internet.
Our philosophy is simple: AI should elevate humans, not replace them.
Answer Assist: No Question Left Behind
The Answer Assist solves the unanswered question problem, but it does so thoughtfully. We could have built an AI that answers every question instantly. We didn’t. Because premature AI answers erode trust and discourage the human participation that makes communities valuable.
Instead, we built an AI that waits.
The Answer Assist only provides AI answers after a configurable threshold, typically 24 to 48 hours, and only if no qualified human response exists. This preserves community-first engagement. Your members still help each other. The AI is the safety net, not the first responder.
The best AI answer is still second-best to a great human answer. That’s why we wait.
AI Moderation: Protection at Scale
Content moderation has always forced an ugly choice. Pay for expensive human review that can’t scale, or rely on unreliable AI that misses context and nuance.
Aurora’s AI Moderation System combines both, and it does so transparently.
We’re replacing dependency on legacy spam filtering with a system that’s not only more accurate and cost-effective, but also transparent and configurable.
IRIS® AI. Every Channel, One View
IRIS® AI will support the channels your customers actually use:
- Facebook: Posts, Messenger, comments, ads
- X/Twitter: Tweets, DMs, mentions
- Instagram: Posts, stories, reels, DMs
- LinkedIn: Company updates, articles
- WhatsApp: Business messaging
- YouTube: Video engagement
- Google: Business Messages
- SMS: Text messaging
Organic content. Paid ads. Direct messages. Reviews. All unified in a single view with complete context.
Publishing and Moderation
IRIS® AI will include platform-native publishing and moderation capabilities. AI-powered spam filtering catches issues before they reach your audience. Explainable moderation outcomes help your team understand every decision. Publisher preview workflows ensure quality control before content goes live.
Enterprise-Grade Security
IRIS® AI is being built for enterprise deployment from day one. SSO with SAML. Two-factor authentication. Multi-tenant isolation. Role-based access controls. Controlled onboarding with admin approval. Complete audit trails for compliance.
Enterprise customers need AI they can trust. IRIS delivers modern AI capabilities without compromising security or compliance.
The best product innovations happen when teams aren’t worried about what comes next quarter. They happen when there’s trust, stability, and the freedom to think long-term.
Stability isn’t the destination. It’s the launchpad.
Just Getting Started
These results happened because our team could finally focus on building instead of wondering what comes next. When uncertainty becomes clarity, transformation becomes possible.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished together. And we’re nowhere near done.
The best is yet to come.
Have questions or want to learn more? Reach out to us at khoros@ignitetech.ai
Read where this journey began: IgniteTech acquired Khoros to rebuild it. Here’s what that looks like.