A look back on 2025 — a year of growth

Providing purpose-built technology to government workers is worthy work. 

We’ve seen firsthand how the 90,000 public servants at millions of state and local government agencies fight against technology, and we labor every day to change their status quo. 

It’s our fundamental belief that technology providers should build specifically for every public servant — from the frontlines to headquarters and everywhere in between. That’s how we power a more effective, integrated government that is able to better serve its constituents. We’ve put our central thesis to the test: Government employees have unique ways of working, what we call The Five Functions of Government — Plan, Communicate, Coordinate, Organize, and Measure — and we know Government Operations is a fundamentally different kind of work compared to private companies. 

Our government partners are validating this thesis: In 2025, Roundtable more than doubled the number of public servants we’re supporting. And our partners are getting more out of our platform — post counts and resource downloads are both up over 100%, resources added are up over 150%, and resource views are up over 200%. More than that, our convictions that government operations depend upon tighter coordination is borne out by the 300% increase in events hosted on Roundtable this year.

And we’ll keep learning. We’ve seen how expertise and innovative solutions can come from any public servant, in any jurisdiction. By continuing to listen to the people on the front lines, we’ll continue to deliver platform capabilities that make a real impact for government operations.

Reliable AI — built for government

One milestone for this year was AI Answers, Roundtable’s AI-powered answer engine that gives public servants fast, reliable responses that cite exclusively verified data. AI is reshaping every major institution in society, and government at all levels is no exception. Public servants needing to do more with less — and the state agencies facing critical capacity needs — lack safe and effective AI tools that scale without investing months upon months and hundreds of thousands — if not millions of dollars — to implement meaningfully with their operational data. The other alternative is to use publicly available AI that is prone to making things up, posing a risk government agencies cannot accept. 

In November, we convened government technology experts from Hawaii to Vermont at Roundtable’s 2nd Annual Public Sector AI Summit, where state and local leaders swapped expert insights: How they’ve successfully implemented AI, how they’re experimenting, and the challenges and questions they see on the horizon. 

We don’t have all the answers, but we know what public servants want because we asked: They want AI they can trust — one that cites their own data and functionally eliminates hallucinations. They want it to be easy to use, without weeks-long trainings to get up to speed. They want to deploy it quickly, without burdensome processes for IT.

We’ve built Roundtable’s AI in response to the requirements set forth by public servants. Our AI is deployable in days, not months. We can produce reliable, accurate AI responses because it’s grounded in an agency’s data and the operational context of the user. AI in Roundtable is secure and compliant, never training models on user inputs.

While we only launched AI Answers in August, already we’re delivering AI-powered answers every day, and providing out-of-the-box AI tools to thousands of public servants across government.

A growing team, on the move

Roundtable’s growth in 2025 would be impossible without a core group of people: Our dedicated team of 20. Their commitment and expertise allow Roundtable to meet the critical needs of agencies nationwide. We grew headcount by 50% this year, enabling us to expand our ability to serve public servants across government. 

Our team has been keeping America’s roads, railways, and flight corridors hot, meeting public servants where they are. We’ve been learning alongside partners in Texas, Florida, California, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, and beyond. We joined national convenings with election administrators and veterans affairs leaders, including the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans’ Conference, the Election Center Annual Meeting, and the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs Conference — to name just a few. 

And we were lucky enough to spend time huddling, listening, and learning at state and regional gatherings like the Illinois Association of County Clerks and Recorders convening, the CAL FIRE quarterly meeting, and Arizona’s Regional Engagement Meeting, plus roadshows in Oregon and New Jersey and a cross-county coordination workshop in Nebraska. Every stop helped us see Roundtable in action — and sharpen how we can help teams move faster together.

Looking ahead!

With 2025 rapidly coming to a close, we’re looking ahead to 2026 — growing our team, expanding our capabilities, and bringing our built-for-government technology to more of the public servants advancing the mission everyday — Follow along on our journey.

In service of public service,

Madeleine Smith, CEO and co-founder

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