The adoption of AI technologies in businesses increased from 48% to 72% from 2018 to 2019, enabling industries to increase efficiency, streamline processes, and reduce costs. But training these AI models to accurately reflect real-world conditions is a challenge for machine learning practitioners when developing an application from zero to production. AI.Reverie offers a suite of synthetic data and vision APIs, which provide annotated images and videos, to allow organizations to train their machine learning algorithms efficiently at scale and improve the accuracy of their AI efforts. The company, founded in 2017, has raised a total of $5.6M in funding to date and recently landed an impressive $950M contract to help the US Air Force enhance its computer vision capabilities for its Advanced Battle Management System. Aside from the defense industry, the company’s pioneering technology is also being used for urban planning, retail, agricultural, and industrial applications and AI Reverie grew 3x in 2020. AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Daeil Kim to learn more about the company’s vision to make AI sustainable and inclusive, future plans, and much, much more.
AI
WorkFusion Raises $220M for Enterprise Robotic Process Automation Platform for Regulated Industries
Robotic process automation (RPA) enables businesses to free up their human capital to focus on higher-value tasks by automating repetitive, tedious tasks. These robotic systems also free up IT departments as they do not require any specialized skillset to deploy, end up being cost-effective in the longer term, and more accurate. WorkFusion has built its Intelligent Automation enterprise-level software that allows highly -regulated specialized industries like banking, finance, and healthcare to seamlessly adopt RPA. The bots learn in real-time and this knowledge is shared across WorkFusion’s bot ecosystem with sensitive information stripped out so that all customers benefit from a network learning effect. The company counts companies like Deutsche Bank, Hewlett Packard, Standard Bank, and Humana as customers and these partners have been able to save up to 50% in time and 50% in costs for tasks that WorkFusion has been able to automate. AlleyWatch caught up with President and CEO Alex Lyashok to learn more about the power of combining AI, machine learning, and RPA for the enterprise, the company’s future plans, impressive traction, and latest round of funding led by Georgian.
NWO.ai Raises $3.5M to Predict Cultural Shifts Before They Happen Using AI
We’d all like to be able to look into a crystal ball and tell the future. With the use of AI and machine intelligence, we are now able to more accurately produce trend forecasts that accurately mimic reality. NWO.ai takes this one step further. The platform combs through unstructured data to track 20M+ signals, adds a time dimension, eliminates noise, and prioritizes sources to identify microtrends and global cultural shifts. For example, the platform has recently considered and tracked possible geopolitical events and themes like will COVID-19 lead to war, will Bitcoin continue to rise, and the impact of the pandemic on Big Tobacco. AlleyWatch caught up with Cofounders Sourav Goswami and Pulkit Jaiswal to learn more about the company’s recent launch out of stealth, future plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Hyperplane, Wavemaker, Colle Capital, Adit Ventures, and SuperAngel.
Vise Raises $45M to be the AI-Powered Investment Management Platform for Investment Advisors
Global managed assets account for $74T in AUM. While institutional investors account for sixty percent of this amount, the remaining portion is managed by smaller institutions and advisers. Vise is the AI-powered investment management platform that empowers independent advisory practices. The company is focused on servicing the entire client-advisor relationship through automation while still allowing advisors to maintain a personalized relationship. AlleyWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Samir Vasavada and Cofounder and CIO Runik Mehrotra to learn more about the market the company serves, future plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include Sequoia Capital, Allen & Company, Founders Fund, Greenoaks, Michael Ovitz, and Nikesh Arora.
Arthur Raises $15M for its AI Monitoring Solution to Protect the Integrity of Automated Workflows
The AI software market is expected to grow 54% per annum over the next several years according to Statista. As the evolution of AI continues, challenges do remain especially when it comes to the effects of bias in models. Arthur is a comprehensive monitoring solution, fairness assessment tool, and model management platform that allows firms to gain oversight and control of their machine learning systems. The platform gives companies the confidence that they are scaling with visibility as a simple mistake can become catastrophic as AI-powered models scale. Founded in 2018, Arthur’s technology has been deployed at organizations like Humana, Bloomberg, Truebill, and the US Air Force and the company is growing very fast with revenue up 300% in the last six months alone. AlleyWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Adam Wenchel to learn more about the importance of AI monitoring, the company’s future plans, and latest round of financing from investors that include Index Ventures, Acrew, Plexo Capital, Work-Bench, and AME Ventures.
Kustomer Acquired by Facebook for a Reported $1B Price Tag
Kustomer, the customer service messaging and management platform, has agreed to be acquired by Facebook. While the terms of the transaction were not disclosed, it has been widely reported that the transaction value is $1B.
Verbit Raises $60M for its AI-Powered Voice Transcription Tool Built for The Enterprise
Verbit is the AI-powered transcription and captioning platform that transcribes speech regardless of accent, domain-specific languages, background noises, echoes, and more. To ensure the accuracy and quality of transcriptions/captions, Verbit has a network of 22,000 human transcribers that validate the technology-produced dictations. AlleyWatch caught up with Tom Livne to learn more about Verbit’s technology and how this funding will help position it to be a leader in the global transcription market, which is more than $300B. Verbit has raised a total of $125M across four rounds and this latest round comes from investors that include Sapphire Ventures led our Series C round, Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures, ClalTech, and Vertex Growth.
Roots Automation Raises $3.2M to Make Bots Your Digital Coworkers at Scale
The most agile and innovative companies will rely on AI-powered digital “coworkers” alongside creative humans to enhance productivity and increase profits. Roots Automation has built the first zero integration, self-learning Digital Coworker (pre-trained bot) that can perform a variety of common tasks found in Insurance, Healthcare, and Financial Services roles. Through interactions with human counterparts, the pre-programmed bots increase their capabilities and become more efficient, better at understanding the business, and eventually have the capacity to offset the work of four to eight individuals on average per bot. AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Chaz Perera to learn more about the company, how his time as Chief Transformation Officer at AIG provided the inspiration for the Roots Automation, and the company’s first funding round led by Vestigo Ventures.
Dataiku Nabs Another $100M for its Enterprise AI Platform that Democratizes Data
Dataiku is a leading global enterprise AI company that weaves AI into everyday operations at some of the largest companies like BNP Paribas, GE Aviation, Sephora, and more. Now more than ever before, companies need to harness Enterprise AI as a widespread organizational asset instead of siloing it into a specific team or role. VP of Finance Ed Bush shares more on Dataiku’s mission to make AI ubiquitous for enterprise companies, the company’s future plans, and recent funding round from investors that include Stripes, Tiger Global Management, Battery Ventures, CapitalG, Dawn Capital, FirstMark Capital, and ICONIQ.
OpenAI’s GPT-3 is the Future We’ve Been Waiting For
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory started in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Marc Benioff, and others. OpenAI’s mission statement: Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The OpenAI Charter describes the principles that guide us as we execute on our mission. While OpenAI is […]
MeetElise Raises $6.5M for its AI-Powered Assistant for Rentals
COVID has brought contactless to the forefront in situations where technology can replace human interaction. This societal shift has had a significant impact on the real estate industry, forcing it to reexamine how to better serve and communicate in times where in-person interactions are not advisable. MeetElise has built an AI personal assistant that helps leasing agents manage the rental process and respond immediately to prospect leads, questions, and even schedule guided tours. The company’s growth is up 50% during COVID. CEO Minna Song shares more about how the platform is simplifying the rental process with AI, how leasing agents are reclaiming 2-3 hours a day with automation, and the company’s recent funding from investors that include Navitas Capital, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential