What we've announced.

Auto Remarketing's Nick Zulovich covered the launch of NEXUS, the automotive AI performance manager that takes a manager's objective, assigns the work to the dealership's connected AI agents across sales, service and customer follow-up, and reports back, working from the store's CRM and DMS data.

"Dealers are building an AI workforce, and that workforce needs direction," said founder and CEO Chris Martinez. "NEXUS is the performance manager." Co-founder and CTO Joe Simmons: "Orchestration is a core part of the technology. NEXUS connects a manager's request to the data, systems, and AI agents needed to carry it out."

NEXUS directs a dealership's connected AI agents and does real work across its systems. With its own computer and connections to the store's CRM and DMS, it helps managers spot opportunities, hand tasks to AI agents, message customers and staff, make videos and images, and report back on what got done.

The software and AI tools site Bitcomme ran the NEXUS launch release in its CRM section, introducing IgniteUps.ai's AI performance manager that directs a dealership's AI agents and turns CRM and DMS data into finished work.

The automotive AI platform now works leads, calls and service conversations across 50 dealership rooftops, logging every exchange back to the store's CRM. Across its dealer network IgniteUps reports more than 1.8 million AI-powered customer conversations and more than 960,000 dealership customer records under management.

Fowler Toyota of Tulsa is the newest dealership named, with the store's permission, on the IgniteUps.ai Dealer Results page. The AI workforce took over the store's customer database in July 2026 across text, email and voice, working replies in real time and handing every conversation to the team in context.

At publication the page showed 7,972 outreach conversations, 2,758 customers worked, 913 customers who wrote back and 142 hand-raisers surfaced. The figures refresh nightly from live platform data.

Dealer Software Success led its September 14 Dealer News roundup with IgniteUps.ai, describing how the platform deploys AI-driven outreach across voice, SMS and email to engage leads and manage customer communications across the entire lifecycle, and profiling co-founder and CEO Chris Martinez's background running dealership operations.

The piece's line on persistence: "traditional BDC personnel typically give up on leads long before IgniteUps.ai does."

Lead Shop submits a real inquiry through a dealership's own website and grades everything that comes back: who responded, on which channels, how fast, and whether anyone actually answered the question the customer asked. It gives dealers the same view of their internet lead handling that AI Mystery Shop gives them of their phones.

IgniteUps.ai CEO Chris Martinez joined hosts Ted Ings and Sarah Vantine live on the Fixed Ops Roundtable, ahead of its Back to School Week, to talk about AI and emerging technology, changing customer expectations, dealership operations, Fixed Ops and where automotive retail is headed.

Two new tools for checking the customer experience a store actually delivers. AI Mystery Shop places a call to the dealership posing as a customer; the call comes back recorded, transcribed and graded against an editable rubric, including whether anyone asked for the appointment. Phone Line Health dials the numbers a store publishes and forwards to, from that store's own IgniteUps number, and reports which ones a customer cannot get through on: disconnected, always busy, or rejecting calls.

With the group's permission, IgniteUps.ai now names The Kelly Automotive Group on its Dealer Results page: seven rooftops and six brands across eastern Pennsylvania and Melbourne, Florida, running the full AI workforce since November 2025, including speed-to-lead, lease-end and equity outreach, and after-hours voice.

At publication the page showed more than 240,000 outreach conversations and more than 58,000 customers worked, with every conversation handed to the group's BDC in context. The figures refresh nightly from live platform data.

IgniteUps.ai now connects directly to the CDK dealer management system, bringing repair orders, service appointments, parts and F&I data into the platform so service-due, declined-service and equity outreach can run from the store's own DMS records. The first CDK store went live in August 2026.

The AI Calling Workspace is where a dealership's phone calls happen. Each rep gets a dedicated number, the call rings their own phone so it works from the lot with no headset, and every connected call is recorded, transcribed and graded the same way IgniteUps grades the store's other calls.

A "call next" queue keeps callbacks the rep promised and recent hand-raisers in front of them, unknown callers are shown by number until the rep saves the contact, and dispositions and notes push to the store's CRM.

Dealerships on DriveCentric can now run the IgniteUps AI workforce inside their CRM: leads flow in, AI conversations and activity are written back to the customer record, and human takeover hands the conversation to a salesperson with the full history. The first DriveCentric stores went live in July 2026.

DealerSocket dealerships can now connect their CRM to IgniteUps.ai for AI texting, lead follow-up and customer database outreach, with conversations logged back to the customer record and handed to the store's team when a person is needed.

F&I Coach records a finance manager's customer session, transcribes it, and grades the menu presentation, objection handling and compliance against the products the store actually sells. Each session becomes a Deal Film Room the manager can replay, with the areas of opportunity linked to the exact moment in the conversation.

A Performance Command Center rolls sessions up by finance manager and by store so managers can see attach rates and coaching needs across rooftops. The first stores went live in May 2026.

Through DealerVault, IgniteUps.ai now reads sales and service data from dealer management systems including CDK Global, Reynolds & Reynolds, Dealertrack, DealerBuilt, Autosoft, Dominion, PBS Systems and Quorum. Sold and serviced customers feed the workforce's retention, equity and service-due outreach, and AI-influenced sales are matched back to real deals.

CBT News featured IgniteUps.ai co-founder Chris Martinez, then General Manager of Mercedes-Benz of San Antonio, on why consistent execution of a structured process and team accountability drive dealership sales, how to enforce accountability without confrontation, and why cutting transaction time matters to the customer.

"A big part of it is just training, the discipline, making sure that we're sticking to a process. When you have that type of accountability, there's no way not to win."

Before founding IgniteUps.ai, Chris J. Martinez was named to Auto Remarketing's 40 Under 40 class of 2018 as General Sales Manager of Charles Maund Toyota, the Austin store he helped take from roughly 150 vehicles a month to more than 1,000. He documented the operating principles behind that growth in Driving Sales: What It Takes to Sell 1000+ Cars Per Month (J. Joseph Group, 2017).