Anthony Monteiro is the CEO and founder of Auto Acquire AI, a tool that lets car dealers of any size buy vehicles directly from consumers. He has been building software for car dealers for about 30 years. He joined us in Episode 25 (December 19, 2025) to talk about why dealers are short on used inventory and how instant offers and AI inspections fix it.
Anthony compared it to Carvana's TV ads, where a seller gets a price and someone picks the car up from the driveway. Auto Acquire gives that same flow to the everyday dealer, "small, medium, large," without needing a mega dealership organization behind it.
A seller fills out a short form on the dealer's website and instantly gets a certificate with an offer. The certificate links to an inspection on the seller's phone. Like depositing a check, the app poses them around the car for 14 exterior photos and 4 interior photos, including the dashboard and odometer. Computer vision then looks for dents, scratches, dings and tears in the seats.
The other half is outreach. Dealers can go to their own customer database, find every owner of the model they need, and send a price before the customer ever shops around.
It's math. It's algorithmic.
— Anthony Monteiro, Episode 25
Sure. You know, it's it's funny. Sometimes I almost wanna take AI out of the name. Right?
— Anthony Monteiro, Episode 25
His point: many companies put an application on top of old legacy software and call themselves AI. Auto Acquire started from scratch. His last startup, a vehicle pick-up and drop-off logistics platform, already relied on AI for driver routing and timing before today's LLMs, so the team went in comfortable with it.
After a prep call with Anthony and Chris from Auto Acquire, Jordan vibe-coded a dealer lead intent-to-action workflow builder. A webhook fires when someone fills out a web form, AI scores the person's intent, high-confidence leads get a templated SMS and low-confidence leads go to an email drip. In the demo at 03:09, a lead asking whether a 2021 F-150 was still available got an automated text offering a test drive.
Anthony liked it and flipped it to acquisition: instead of "is the F-150 available," ask "would you like to sell your 2021 Porsche Cayenne?" He added that dealers without a big BDC team might want a voice AI agent to make the follow-up calls.
And the days of having a massive room full of developers and scrum teams of 10 people and review and peer reviews and all of the things that really slow down code development, I think, are in the past.
— Anthony Monteiro, Episode 25
In the news segment, Anthony questioned Waymo's $15B raise, arguing Tesla can put robotaxis on the road for a third of the vehicle cost. For more conversations like this, see our pages on AI in automotive and AI in sales, hosted by Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler.
Anthony Monteiro is the CEO and founder of Auto Acquire AI. He has spent about 30 years building software for car dealers, and his previous startup was a vehicle pick-up and drop-off logistics platform that used AI for route and timing optimization.
Auto Acquire AI lets car dealers of any size buy vehicles directly from consumers. Sellers get an instant offer certificate, then a phone-guided photo inspection that computer vision checks for dents, scratches and seat tears.
Anthony says big buyers like CarMax, Carvana, Lithia and Sonic dominate the auctions, and auction and transport fees squeeze margins. Slow callbacks also push sellers to instant-offer platforms, so dealers lose trades.
The app poses the seller around the car to take 14 exterior photos and 4 interior photos, including the dashboard and odometer. Computer vision then looks for dents, scratches, dings and tears in the seats.
