From PocketConfidant AI to a PhD and the ICF AI Coaching Standards: 11 years building AI agents that extend coaching without replacing coaches.
From one vision in 2014 to three companies, a PhD, international standards of a profession, and new scientific endeavors. What I have learned, what I do today, and what I can do for people.
By Dr Olivier Malafronte — co-founder of Magif.ai
In 2014, I had just come back from eighteen months in Hong Kong. I was a young professional starting my career, still marked by personal and professional challenges, and I began my first coach training.
That training switched on a light. I realised there were methods and practices that could help people know themselves better, develop real skills and navigate the challenges life puts in their way. Transformation was not a gift reserved for a few. It could be learned.
Then came an idea that sounded slightly crazy. A good coach or therapist spends years building a method: the questions, the sequence, the patience. That method lives in one room, with one person, at one price. What if it could travel?
Not the coach. The method.
I did not come to this from technology. I came to it from my own life. I had met leaders who diminished people's confidence instead of developing it, and I had felt it myself. Coaching showed me another way. And it raised a question I have been working on ever since: why should that method only reach the people who can afford the room?
I started coaching in 2015, and launched my first AI coaching project the same year. In 2016, I co-founded PocketConfidant AI, one of the first AI coaching companies in the world, and led it for seven years. In 2023 came Rypple.ai, where I raised the first million in three months on research, experiments and a proof of concept, and recruited the team that took the company to its exit. Rypple.ai was acquired in the US in 2026. In 2025, I co-founded Magif.ai with Vincent Wargnier and Maxime Bui.
As co-founder and CEO, I have raised funds, hired with my whole team, set commercial and marketing strategy, and led teams of eight to ten engineers on product.
The lesson of those years is simple. The technology was never the hard part. Trust was. Coaches did not trust a machine with their craft. Organisations did not trust a machine with their people. And they were right to ask for proof.
In 2020, I went back to university. I did a PhD in AI coaching and leadership at Université Côte d'Azur (IAE Nice), defended in 2025, with four partner organisations across the US, Europe and Africa. More than 180 leaders took part.
What I found changed how I talk about this field.
AI coaching works through reflection, not advice. When it works, people change their schemas: how they think, feel and act in a real situation. AI does not transform people. Reflection does. AI makes reflection available at the moment it is needed.
The way you relate to the tool decides what you get from it. Leaders with an instrumental orientation use the AI to get answers. Leaders with an empowering orientation use it to meet themselves. The same agent produces very different outcomes.
"Will AI replace coaches?" is the wrong question. What I observe is a fragmentation of usage: some people thrive with an AI agent alone for a while, some combine it with a human coach, some only want a human. Each is valid.
This work is published in Management & Avenir (2024), in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science with Pauline Fatien (2026) and in a Springer book chapter (2026). Since 2026, I have continued this research as Associate Professor and Researcher at the GRM laboratory, Université Côte d'Azur.
Research is not enough if the profession has no shared rules. Since 2020, I have co-authored the ICF AI Coaching Standards. Since 2025, I have been part of the AI Coaching Coalition, which reports to the ICF, the EMCC and the AC, where I lead the work on a shared glossary of AI coaching terms. Words matter: a coach is a human, an AI agent is not.
One conviction runs through all of this: the ethics of an AI agent do not live in the code. They live in the coach who designed it, in the method and the intention they put into it.
Magif.ai is the infrastructure I wish I had in 2014. Coaches, trainers and consultants encode their own method into an AI agent that supports their clients between sessions, under their supervision. It is hosted in the EU, built around a dual consent chain (the client decides what their coach sees; the coach decides what the organisation sees), and every agent can go through a quality audit before release.
Some of what this looks like in practice:
Elaine Leen, coach and EMCC-accredited supervisor, built supervision agents from her own practice rules and offers them alone or combined with her own supervision.
Roy van den Brink-Budgen, a critical thinking expert, built his agent in under an hour; his first client signed the same day.
Maxime Bui's agent supported a team member who was ready to quit. Within a week, that person had moved from fog to clarity and was back in action, and preferred the agent to a general chatbot because of the method behind it.
Robert Dilts's agents are already used by his community, as part of his training offer.
More to come very soon
If you are a coach: turn your method into an AI agent that extends your practice between sessions, and build a business model around it. If you already have clients and a network, our growth sprints get you deployed fast.
If you lead an organisation: design and deploy an AI companion for your managers in about two days, with ten testers from day one, and a referent coach who supervises the agent and the data for the whole programme.
If you are a leader going through a tech transformation or a transition: I coach executives and leaders, internationally, on leadership competence, growth and change.
If you run a conference, a chapter or an institution: I speak and train on AI coaching, ethics and standards. More than 500 coaches educated so far, and 20 conferences in 20 countries this year 2026.
Khalil Gibran wrote that work is love made visible. That is the best description I have found of these eleven years. I was given a lot of love early in life. Coaching showed me how to pass it on. AI is how I am trying to make that reach people who will never sit in a coach's room.
The technology assists the journey. The human always drives it.
If any of this resonates, write us note, always happy to chat 🙂
