Ryan Chapman

By Brad Hadfield

nnovation often begins with curiosity. Long before Ryan Chapman was building artificial intelligence for the self-storage industry, he was just a California kid who loved figuring things out, whether it was solving a Rubik’s Cube or mastering ping pong. It didn’t hurt having a best friend like Clay Jones, who matched this instinct every step of the way. “We met at preschool orientation, so we’ve known each other forever,” says Chapman. “We were always challenging one another.”

As they grew, they began taking on bigger challenges, including surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding. From there, though they remained friends, their paths diverged—each went to a rival university and then competing companies. But the ties of childhood aren’t easily undone, and eventually they teamed up to take on their biggest challenge: artificial intelligence.

Chapman had always gravitated toward math and science. He began programming when he was about 14, even creating games for himself. “I’ve always been fascinated by the ability for computers to do things that I couldn’t do myself,” he says. “Almost like giving people superpowers.”

Despite that, he never viewed technology as a likely career path. He had doctors in the family, so when it was time to choose a major at the University of California, Berkeley, he selected bioengineering to keep medical school an option (Jones, naturally, went to Stanford).

Surrounded by Silicon Valley, Chapman quickly discovered that many of his classmates were pursuing computer science. Then came the moment that changed everything. One afternoon, Chapman found himself helping his roommates complete an assignment for a computer science class he wasn’t even taking. “I remember helping them with their project and thinking, ‘Man, this is super fun,’” he recalls. “I loved the problem solving.”

With that, Chapman changed his major and began taking his own computer science classes. It was exactly what he’d been seeking. “It brought me back full circle to when I was a kid figuring things out,” says Chapman. “I didn’t really know where it would lead, I just knew I loved studying it. It didn’t feel like work.”

That attitude became something of a personal compass. Chapman wasn’t thinking of future salaries or titles; instead, he was noticing how time could disappear. “I would always lose track of time while I was programming,” he says. “I think that’s a good measure of finding something you naturally do well. If you stop looking at the clock, you’ve probably found something you really enjoy.”

Berkeley also introduced Chapman to entrepreneurship. Working alongside classmates, he helped develop a mobile application called Touch Freight, designed to help freight truck drivers. The project won a university competition before advancing to the Mobile World Congress in Spain, where it captured another top honor. The experience gave Chapman his first taste of building something from the ground up and seeing an idea evolve into a viable business.

His entrepreneurial spirit grew from there. Chapman next helped invest in some student-run companies through a program called Dorm Room Fund, which helped students get start-ups off the ground. Serving as managing partner allowed Chapman to evaluate companies from the investor’s perspective while continuing to develop his own technical skills. For him, offering guidance and support to those building something bigger than themselves was really important.

After graduation, Chapman accepted an offer with Apple, where he would spend the next eight years. Despite his already impressive resume, he calls it his first “real job.” As a machine learning engineer on Apple’s Proactive Intelligence team, Chapman helped develop machine learning systems that would analyze users’ behavioral patterns and context. Rather than simply responding to commands, the technology attempted to predict what users might want before they even asked; this could mean suggesting an application or delivering a more personalized experience. As artificial intelligence continued evolving, Chapman moved into management, eventually leading teams responsible for AI agent systems within Siri.

“It was a great experience,” he says. “But I’d always wanted to start a company, and I wanted to do that with Clay.”

Jones, meanwhile, had landed at Amazon, where he worked on machine learning systems. As voice agents became capable of handling more complex customer interactions, Chapman and Jones began looking for industries with high call volume, complicated workflows, and fragmented technology. Real estate quickly emerged as an area where the technology could have a meaningful operational impact.

Rather than trying to build another broad AI platform, the duo believed the greatest opportunity lay in mastering a single industry. Chapman compares the strategy to Waymo’s approach to autonomous driving. “Waymo picked one city and went really deep. They mastered that environment first. I believe the AI agents developed with that same level of focus will ultimately deliver the most value. I wanted to find our own city.”

That city turned out to be the self-storage industry. “I spoke with Clay and we talked about real estate as an opportunity,” says Chapman. “That led to a conversation with our friend Taylor, who now leads sales at Lumio and had worked in acquisitions at Red Dot Storage. That was the lightbulb moment.”

Chapman and Jones began talking with operators, learning about their daily challenges, and looking for customer-facing and operational work that artificial intelligence could realistically improve. Those conversations became the foundation for Lumio.

In 2025, Chapman and Jones launched Lumio. Today, Lumio helps self-storage operators manage one of their most valuable resources: customer interactions. Rather than functioning as a simple chatbot, Chapman describes Lumio as an AI operations platform that allows operators to deploy and manage AI agents capable of handling a wide range of customer-facing work across phone calls, website conversations, and outbound follow-up. The agents answer phone calls, complete rentals, process payments, provide gate codes, explain account charges, assist website visitors with finding the right unit, and even follow-up on late payments. Behind the scenes, they also analyze customer conversations to help operators identify recurring issues, understand why tenants move out, and uncover opportunities to improve service.

Lumio turns each operator’s policies, workflows, training materials, escalation rules, frequently asked questions, and facility-specific knowledge into skills the agents can follow.

“Our AI agents work from the same operating playbook as the human team,” says Chapman. “They sound and work like your team, down to each facility. When the AI cannot resolve something, it hands the issue to your team with the full context and learns from how they resolve it, helping the agents improve over time.”

The company’s goal is to give existing teams more capacity by removing unnecessary tasks that consume valuable time. “With less time spent on this repetitive work, your team can actually spend more time on sales or cover more properties,” he says. “We see larger operators continuing to expand, and Lumio gives their existing teams the capacity to support that growth while continuing to deliver the best possible customer experience.”

Chapman knows that many self-storage operators spend much of their day balancing customer service, sales, collections, and facility operations. He feels AI can relieve many of those routine demands, allowing staff to focus on the interactions where people make the greatest difference. “Every missed phone call represents a potential rental, while every routine customer inquiry pulls employees away from other responsibilities,” he says. “That’s where Lumio can help. The platform handles many of those routine interactions while allowing on-site teams to focus on higher-value work. Our customers want to make sure they never miss a lead. If someone calls and reaches voicemail, there’s a good chance they’ll simply call another facility. Capturing those opportunities is incredibly important.”

In an industry where tenants are often going through a hard time due to death, divorce, displacement, or downsizing, Chapman has found a way to make the struggle a little easier. And it may have all started with a Rubik’s Cube.