COBUS KOK VP, AI EXPERIENCES

Jacobus (Cobus) Kok is Vice President, Product for AI Experiences at Priceline, where he leads the development of Penny, the company's AI travel assistant. Since joining Priceline in 2015, he has advanced innovation across Finance, Risk Management, Payments and Checkout before taking on AI product development. Under his leadership, Penny has grown from a simple chatbot into a leading multimodal, agentic AI travel assistant serving millions of customers throughout their journeys.

Before leading Checkout and Payments, Cobus served as Director of Consumer Risk Management, where he oversaw the fraud prevention team and implemented advanced machine learning screenings to reduce risk. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Buro, an Apple Authorized Reseller which was acquired by Digicape, and Limbik, a strategic branding and design agency.

Cobus is a recognized voice in AI and travel technology, with perspectives featured in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He also has served on customer advisory boards for Affirm and Spreedly and as an Economics Teaching Fellow at Yale University.

He holds a Master of Advanced Management from the Yale School of Management and an MBA from the University of Cape Town. He earned undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Value and Policy Studies from Stellenbosch University. Based in New York, Cobus is an avid runner, gardener and traveler.