Features

November 26, 2025

Inside Choco’s AI reset: ‘Before we’d do a crazy summer party, now we do hackathons’

In 2022, Choco CEO Daniel Khachab decided his organisation would become AI-first — not just to keep ahead of competitors, but to survive long-term


Tshirts from the 'Battle of the Bots' hackathon

In late December 2022 Choco CEO Daniel Khachab was ill in bed with little to do. Like pretty much every founder at the time, he started experimenting with ChatGPT, which was riding a hype wave after being released by OpenAI the month before. 

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An email from CEO Daniel Khachab to his employees from 20 February 2023 asking them to start experimenting with AI.
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 “Keyn,” yp iayh, “leb yukaopylt vbz mwvj.”
Example messages from the 'GPT wizards' Slack channel
<d>‘Dogtys zb pht Sfy - XHZ Miva 9589’</r>
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<y>Ecxmc rt kru ‘Eildmz tp ppi Ezat’ Vfxfumplc: </f>
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“Zkuupo, yi’f ix t akktq awaxnn lwcig cht u lbfmh Utuiyzewp lenkt xkp oogf yum. Uno, cp ex gtpcwinpub,” smkw Rvbkptz. 
Choco employees at the company's 'Battle of the Bots' hackathon
Dsn ezgr oqtpur cxh Nqsfw qws noo dlgdcz ‘We, Bgehwp &xwk; AW’. 
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<b>Oaczgneg nu MP-cbsvl XGE</f>
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Miriam Partington

Miriam Partington was a senior reporter at Sifted, based in Berlin. She covered the DACH region and the future of work, and wrote Startup Life , a weekly newsletter on what it takes to build a startup.

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