Hi there!

I'm Doug, co-founder and CEO at Lightfern. I decided to build Lightfern after leaving OpenAI in 2025.

I was the first hire for OpenAI's London office, and I led engineers and researchers that improved ChatGPT's audio, multilingual, and image generation capabilities.

But something felt wrong.

AI had made writing soulless and bland. It was everywhere, from socials to emails. Writing can be daunting and time-consuming, especially as you refine draft after draft. But by filtering all their thoughts through LLMs, people ended up sounding the same and losing their unique voice.

That's when I and my co-founders, Matt and Marcus, decided to build something new.

Lightfern makes world-leading AI tech accessible to everybody. It requires zero configuration and acts as an extension of your voice, not a replacement. It nails your tone for every context, whether professional or personal. Nicknames, greetings, sign-offs, you name it.

All of this, with security and privacy at the very heart, so you never have to sacrifice personality for productivity again.

Our world-class team have backgrounds across communications, from helping to build Facebook and Attio to working across journalism and advertising. We know how powerful authentic expression can be.

This is the future of AI-powered communication, starting with your email inbox.

Happy typing!