2013
Founded in Sydney
Ben Brophy and Shane Berkinshaw founded Upwire in Sydney, frustrated by the rigidity and complexity of enterprise communications technology. The goal was simple: make it faster, cheaper, and possible without code.
Playground. Where AI agents play. Safely.
About UpwireBuilt by operators.
Built by operators.
For operators.
Upwire exists because enterprise customer communication was too slow, too expensive, and too dependent on code. We built the platform we wished we had.
Our storyOver a decade building
Over a decade building
what enterprises actually need.
We started in 2013 with a simple belief: enterprise communications should be fast to build, easy to change, and impossible to get wrong. That belief built Upwire. It now powers the intelligence in our product - Playground.
Global
Built for scale
Operating across Australia, New Zealand, the EU, USA, Japan, and East Asia - Upwire has powered enterprise communications at scale across multiple continents and regulatory environments.
Now
Playground
The next generation of Upwire. An AI execution layer built specifically for regulated industries - where compliance, speed, and auditability are not optional extras.
FoundersThe people
The people
behind Upwire.
Operators, engineers, and strategists who have spent careers inside the problem Playground solves.
CTO
Shane Berkinshaw - Co-founder
23+ years in global business communication across Australia, NZ, EU, USA, Japan, and East Asia. A very early adopter of Google and AWS, Shane saw the CPaaS opportunity before most - and built Upwire around it.
CEO
Ben Brophy - Co-founder
15+ years in global business communications and investment banking across Australia, UK, and USA. Ben's mission: empower every business to build and deploy without the constraints and cost of code.
How we think
Our principles.
Regulated by default
Every product decision starts with compliance. Not as a feature - as a foundation. AI that can't be deployed safely is AI that doesn't exist in regulated industries.
Execution over theory
The industry is full of AI strategy. We build AI execution. The difference is a live system doing real work, with an audit trail, inside a regulated environment.
Operators, not vendors
We have spent our careers building inside enterprises. We understand procurement, legal review, change management, and the reality of legacy infrastructure.
Get in touchReady to see
Ready to see
Playground in action?
Based in Sydney. Working globally. 6-8 Clarke St, Crows Nest NSW. Book a conversation with our team.