Transfinder President and CEO Antonio Civitella stands in front of a giant monitor in Transfinder’s conference room in Schenectady on Wednesday. The company’s revenue last year was $50.15 million, an increase of 19% compared to 2024.
SCHENECTADY — At a time when most Americans are just beginning to acclimate to a life with artificial intelligence at their fingertips, Antonio Civitella is using AI to power his business.
The CEO of Schenectady-based Transfinder, a software company best known for its bus route guidance software for school districts, said AI is not doing the jobs of employees. The aim is to free their days from mundane tasks and help them reach their full potential.
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“We do a lot of things with AI, and AI has made us more efficient,” Civitella said. “AI helps us get back to basics. It eliminates some of the tasks we used to leave to AI.”
Civitella says a perfect example of how AI can assist employees is during sales presentations. Each presentation is 90 minutes long.
“And a lot of different things are discussed and talked about, right? Bottom line. At the end you get a list of things to do. Well, we use AI to summarize the 90-minute presentation. It tells you what you promised, what was important? All of that,” Civitella said.
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Previously, Transfinder employees had to do all of this manually. Now AI will do it for you. A tedious task that took hours was reduced to minutes.
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“Currently, when you give a presentation, a transcript is created, and that transcript is immediately dumped into the AI model (and summarized), and the page count goes from 150 to 2-3 pages,” Civitella said. “And that’s a very good thing. These are game changers. It’s meant to make you better. And here’s where I’m very excited. I think people who are worried about AI understand why. Suddenly, everyone has a personal assistant.”
Civitera made the comments on Thursday, when Transfinder released its annual results. For the 28th consecutive year, Transfinder achieved record annual revenue. In 2025, the company generated revenue of $50.15 million, an increase of 19% compared to 2024.
According to Civitella, hardware sales grew 22% in 2025 to $11.5 million. The company is also enhancing its public safety routing software for police departments. The Schenectady Police Department was secured as a client in 2025.
With all these proceeds, Transfinder purchased custom-made LED screens for the conference room. It takes up almost an entire wall and has theater-style audio and video capabilities.
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“This is one of the most expensive things we’ve ever purchased,” Civitella said.
In a wide-ranging interview about business, AI, and the global business landscape, Civitella spoke passionately about the business. He says that while AI is a threat to many technology companies, hard work remains the best way forward.
“AI means leveling the playing field, meaning a new company can come in and literally understand what we’re doing within six months. They can use our technology to replicate everything we have, which is why we invest a lot of patents (in applications). We currently own a lot of patents to protect ourselves from someone copying us,” Civitella said.
“But the one thing you can’t imitate is that AI won’t help you. It’s to have as many clients as we have. You could try to replicate our technology right now to match the colors and fonts on your website, but you wouldn’t have the clients that we have. That’s a big difference,” Civitella said.
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While international tensions with China fuel the US government’s anti-globalist economic policies, Civitera has set up two innovation centers with offices in China and India, doubling its global trade. Civitella said these offices are very important to his company. And Transfinder spends a lot of time making sure these offices are thriving. The company also has offices in Austin, Texas.
“Without all three, we wouldn’t be here today,” Civitella said. “They’re very smart people. We talked about culture. We have beautiful offices in great locations in both Mumbai and Shanghai. These are first-class offices. Joe (the company’s chief operating officer) and I personally chose these offices. I got off the train and walked to the office. Those details go a long way because they’re authentic. And we want to make sure they have access to the latest technology.”
Transfinder is hiring rapidly. The company will have 212 employees at the end of 2025, and has hired six new employees so far in 2026, with a seventh scheduled to join next week. Civitella says its social media marketing has achieved great results in the age of AI.
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“People are searching for us now and finding us at a higher rate,” Civitella said. “That’s because they’re using AI to find companies they want to work for. And we’re on the positive side. We had more than twice as many applicants in 2025 than we did in 2024. We know that if you’re looking for a job, there are a lot of job sites you can search. But there’s also an easy way to just start typing. And we’re ranking high[in searches].”
