TECH
Together – Michael Urban, left, with Plugilo founder Michael Mohr.
Pluggy is designed to help companies turn their knowledge, products and expertise into reliable, AI-powered advice that supports customers wherever decisions are made, whether on websites, in shops, portals or apps.
“ Plugilo is not just another chatbot, marketplace or advertising platform,” Michael said.“ It is a trusted market and intelligence infrastructure.”
Instead of relying on unstructured text, the system uses Plugilo Cards, which are structured knowledge units for products, services, companies or documents.
These are organised into Stacks, acting as intent-based collections like shortlists, comparison sets or procurement workspaces.
Pluggy is uniquely trained across three distinct levels to ensure accuracy and relevance.
The first level comes from the data owners, meaning the brands and manufacturers providing the core product information.
The second level involves the domain owners, such as the retailers or portals hosting the bot.
The final level is driven by the users themselves, who interact with the bot and provide real demand signals through searches, saves and interactions.
Because data owners remain in control, information can be certified, structured and kept fresh. Origin and attribution are preserved, meaning partners remain visible and users get accurate, governed advice rather than a generic black-box answer.
For companies across the UK, the practical applications of Pluggy are vast and highly impactful.
A manufacturer can make complex product information easily understandable and advisory-ready. A retailer can guide customers to the right purchase with greater accuracy. A professional service firm can explain complex expertise simply, and a B2B supplier can support procurement teams with clear comparisons and requirements.
Ultimately, Pluggy helps reduce customer uncertainty, guides users to the right contact points, improves conversion quality and creates a highly professional advisory experience.
It allows businesses to become easier to understand, easier to trust and easier to buy from.
The Partner Portal serves as the professional control layer, allowing companies to manage their domains, sources, permissions and calls-to-action.
This means Pluggy can be perfectly tailored to fit any business context, whether it is a local retailer’ s website or a massive manufacturer’ s product world.
Importantly, Plugilo does not aim to replace existing market actors. Instead, it integrates them, making existing channels AI-ready and significantly more effective.
The synergy between Plugilo and MAP Group is what makes this development so potent for the Tees Valley.
MAP Group’ s investment and strategic support provide Plugilo with the physical and digital infrastructure needed to scale its operations globally, while firmly grounding its UK presence in Teesside.
MAP Group played a pivotal role in bringing this vision to life. Michael said:“ Michael founded DCI, a database for commercial industry, and then founded Plugilo in the US.
Data and AI together are powerful, but data must be owned by the owners.”
“ We then met MAP Group and Mike, who was the initiator for that first contact. After that, MAP joined us, signed a contract becoming an investor and we are working very closely together.”
Through the Latos development in Stockton, MAP Group is laying the physical foundation for the AI economy. By integrating Plugilo’ s intelligent, trusted advisory layer, it is creating a comprehensive, end-to-end AI solution right here in the North-East.
As businesses face mounting pressure to adopt AI, the fear of uncontrolled automation and generic chatbots is real. Plugilo offers a secure, structured alternative built on trust, ownership and real demand.
Michael said:“ Every company should ask,‘ What knowledge do we have that customers, partners or employees need to understand better?’ Pluggy can help make that knowledge useful at the very moment of decision. We want businesses to join early, shape the standard with us and benefit from the network as it grows.”
With Latos providing the engine and Plugilo providing the intelligence, Teesside is developing into the blueprint for how regional economies can build, trust and thrive in the AI age.
The voice of business in the Tees region | 19