BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CollegeVine, the AI-powered professional network for high school students, today announced the launch of Trellis, a first-of-its-kind agentic AI product to reimagine the student recruitment journey. Trellis will equip institutions with trained autonomous AI recruiters that provide a highly personalized experience for students while enabling universities to meaningfully engage their top of funnel. Today, universities juggle hundreds of thousands of students at the top of their funnel and struggle to effectively yield these students through to enrollment, relying heavily on mass email campaigns to do so. In turn, students are bombarded with thousands of generic emails and mailers throughout high school. “Trellis will redefine recruitment in higher education for the benefit of both students and universities,” said Zack Perkins, CEO and co-founder of CollegeVine. “The ability for AI recruiters to act on behalf of their partnering institutions and give each student 1-on-1 attention introduces a brand-new paradigm to an industry beleaguered by burnout and ineffective tooling.”

EdXeno CEO and founder Jason Booker at the startup’s office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)As a high school counselor for more than a decade, Jason Booker witnessed the challenges that students face when applying to college — including a lack of resources to guide them through the process, and university systems slow to adopt the technologies necessary to connect effectively with students in the modern era.Booker’s Seattle-based startup, EdXeno, is working to fill that gap.EdXeno is developing a mobile app to provide free college advising and resources to students, and give universities a recruiting platform by communicating directly with interested students. It’s currently concept-testing and building partnerships with universities, and working on a minimum viable product.In seeking to upgrade the college admissions process, EdXeno has a larger goal.“The vision is to create this equitable landscape where everyone has access to the same information,” Booker said. “Historically, students have been forced to conform to institutional needs, and the adults’ needs. Really, nothing in ed-tech has ever been built around the needs of students. And that’s where we think we’re different.”Booker has been working on this idea since long before the U.S