Enhancing community connections: Hivebrite’s vision for AI innovation

At Hivebrite, we support all kinds of communities — from tight-knit, passion-driven networks to global organizations with hundreds of chapters.

As these communities grow, community managers rely on our technology to scale those essential “you belong here” moments through smart segmentation, seamless group management, automations, and data-driven engagement.

But every community leader knows: even with automation and advanced features, tailoring content to each member’s evolving interests, identifying who needs a timely nudge, and moderating conversations with nuance is nearly impossible at scale.

This is where AI comes in.

Our AI philosophy: Amplifying human connection and community impact

At Hivebrite, we believe technology should strengthen—not replace—human connections, help people focus their time where it matters most, and support better decision-making. And we believe AI should be used to solve meaningful problems for our customers and their members—not serve as a vanity buzzword chasing trends.

Our approach to AI is twofold:

First, we focus on creating more meaningful, relevant connections for members by intelligently surfacing opportunities that align with their interests and goals. Our technology understands the nuances of community relationships, helping members discover the right people, content, and events — at just the right moment.

Second, we aim to support and simplify the community manager’s experience by automating routine tasks and providing actionable insights to inform strategic decisions. Rather than replacing the irreplaceable human touch that makes communities special, our AI tools work behind the scenes to augment community managers’ capabilities — giving them more time to focus on relationship building, content curation, and community culture.

More generally, we’re embedding AI holistically across Hivebrite, ensuring that every feature and improvement delivers real, tangible value in the day-to-day work of community management.

Delivering AI that makes a difference

Hivebrite’s approach to AI is practical, deep, and grounded in how real communities work. Every capability we develop is shaped by our platform’s advanced foundation and our commitment to meaningful outcomes.

Our AI ecosystem features both currently available capabilities and innovative solutions in development:

AI Matching with Orbiit

Our journey into AI-powered community management began with the strategic acquisition of Orbiit, a pioneer in intelligent matching technology. Through Orbiit’s technology integration, we can now offer smart member matching based on customizable criteria such as industry, interests, and experience, while automating the coordination of one-to-one and small group connections. Orbiit also streamlines communication and scheduling workflows, while providing robust feedback collection and analytics.

AI-Driven People Recommendations

To help members build meaningful professional relationships within their communities, we’re enhancing our platform with smart connection features powered by artificial intelligence. The platform will intelligently analyze member profiles, interests, and activities to suggest relevant connections throughout the community experience – whether members are browsing profiles, attending events, or engaging in group discussions. These contextual recommendations will help facilitate organic networking opportunities while tracking relationship development over time. By surfacing the right connections at the right moments, we’re making it easier for members to discover and connect with peers who share their professional interests and goals, creating a more vibrant and interconnected community.

AI Content Recommendations

AI Content Recommendations will help surface the most relevant content to members based on their interests, behavior, and engagement patterns. This personalized approach will help drive deeper engagement by connecting members with content that matters most to them, whether that’s news articles, events, or discussion threads. The system will continuously learn and improve its recommendations through member feedback and interaction data.

AI-Enhanced Search

Our next-generation AI search experience will be powered by advanced natural language processing. Members will be able to find exactly what they’re looking for using conversational queries, while getting intelligent suggestions and results that understand context and intent. The search will work across all content types – from forum posts to event descriptions – providing a unified discovery experience.

AI Admin Copilot

To help community managers focus on strategic initiatives rather than repetitive tasks, we’re introducing admin automation to Hivebrite. This powerful new capability will intelligently handle routine communications and processes, freeing up valuable time for community managers. Our automation features are designed to drive higher activation rates, improve engagement metrics, and create smoother administrative workflows while ensuring consistent member experiences across your community. By reducing manual effort and eliminating friction points, AI Admin Copilot will empower community managers to concentrate on what truly matters – building meaningful relationships and delivering strategic value to their communities.

AI Moderation Assistance

To help community managers nurture safe, inclusive, and vibrant discussions at scale, we’re introducing AI-powered moderation tools that can automatically flag potentially inappropriate content for review. This will help ensure community guidelines are consistently enforced while reducing the manual workload on moderators. The system will be fully configurable to match each community’s specific standards and needs.

You can expect a continued investment in interoperability so AI-powered insights flow across your entire technology stack as well as ongoing innovations, driven by customer feedback and real-world results.

What sets Hivebrite apart

Depth & interoperability

Many platforms offer AI features, but few can match the depth of Hivebrite. Our platform already supports complex, multi-layered communities with high engagement. This gives AI the data and context to deliver insights and automation that are both personal and actionable. The power of AI in Hivebrite comes from its integration with our existing capabilities and the richness of the experiences we enable.

Hivebrite is also designed for interoperability. AI-driven insights and automation can be shared across the other systems and tools you use, creating even greater value from your community data.

Our commitment to responsible AI

As we expand our AI capabilities, we recognize the critical importance of implementing these technologies thoughtfully and ethically.

Privacy and security remain at the forefront of our development process – community data is extremely sensitive and must be protected and processed with the highest standards of security.

We believe in complete transparency about how our AI systems make decisions, ensuring that community managers and members alike understand how and why certain recommendations or matches are made. This transparency extends to putting control firmly in the hands of our users, allowing them to customize their AI-powered experiences and choose how they engage with these features.

We walk the walk: we began our AI journey with Orbiit, a solution that gives administrators complete control over how AI is used to spur connections. Data remains secure, member privacy is respected and the community experience is never compromised.

Our approach to AI development is guided by a comprehensive set of ethical principles that prioritize user trust and community wellbeing. Every new feature undergoes rigorous evaluation to ensure it aligns with these principles and adds genuine value to the community experience.

Last but not least, as a company, we use AI in our own daily operations. We also rely on the Hivebrite platform to run both our internal and external communities. This ensures that every innovation we bring to market is shaped by real-world experience and delivers genuine value to the communities we serve.

Shaping innovation together

Since day one, our approach to innovation has been rooted in true partnership with our customers. Every new capability starts with listening to community managers, administrators, and members to identify concrete opportunities and challenges. Through this deep collaboration, we ensure that what we build reflects the realities of day-to-day community management — not just our own assumptions.

Innovation at Hivebrite does not stop at the product. We’re fortunate to partner with more than 1,000 customers across diverse industries — building relationships that go far deeper than the transactional model often seen in SaaS. This closeness gives us unique insight into how organizations operate: their tools, processes, and ways of working. We bring those learnings back into Hivebrite, adapting our own practices, experimenting alongside our customers, and evolving together. This approach keeps us agile, responsive, and always aligned with the real needs of the communities we serve. As a true partner, it’s something we want to give back — by sharing what we’ve learned along the way.

This post was crafted through collaboration between Jean Hamon (CEO), Usha Iyer (Chief Customer and Growth Officer), Tarek Kamoun (Chief Product and Technology Officer), and Allie Bhutani (Head of Brand Marketing)—to reflect Hivebrite’s dedication to your community’s success and the future we’re building together.