Regular updates on the latest VC-backed AI startups. Follow along to stay informed!
Companion, a San Francisco-based interactive AI device for dogs, raised $6M in Series A funding. Digitalis Ventures and Lerer Hippeau led the round.
Problem to be Solved
Everyone loves their dog, but no one has enough time to give them 100% of the playtime they need to stay happy and healthy. Companion’s AI-powered device provides always-available interactive games and health monitoring for dogs and real-time remote engagement for dog owners.
How They Use AI
To power their product, Companion is likely using a combination of object detection and tracking and simple robotics. On the team page, we don’t see any ML or AI engineers (only software and hardware) which leads us to believe that the company is probably using out-of-the-box solutions for the ML components of their product.
Business Model
Companion charges customers a $49 monthly subscription fee for the hardware device and access to the app and content library. Pet owners seem happy to pay - the next available ship date is currently May 2024.
Patri, an AI-powered revenue intelligence solution, raised $2.4M in early-stage VC funding. Kickstart Seed Fund led the deal, with support from Summit Capital, Capital Eleven, Peak Capital, Mucker Capital, Luxstone Group, and Luv Holdings.
Problem to be Solved
When sales teams lack a clear view of their ideal customer profile (ICP), they can’t prioritize deals, monitor pipeline health, or refine forecasting to achieve revenue goals. Patri’s RevFit AI tool helps discover, refine, and monitor ICP.
How They Use AI
Patri uses AI/ML for two main tasks: building the ideal customer profile (ICP) and evaluating current deals against the ICP. To build the ICP, Patri uses machine learning algorithms. Depending on how complex a pipeline is, the company might cluster different customer attributes and see which combination correlates with the highest win rate. Alternatively, it might just be training a predictive model on closing rates and reverse engineering it to output the ideal customer (this is questionable data science, as it is highly subject to the correlation-not-causation fallacy). To evaluate current deals against the ICP, Patri likely utilizes some of the models from the first application. They also advertise a ChatGPT integration that helps formulate insights by merging them with customer data.
Business Model
SaaS + usage-based pricing. The company charges $59 per month for its RevFit AI tool. This is notably more than the $29 per month fee Patri charges for the legacy tool with no ChatGPT features, which will provide an interesting case study as to whether customers get enough additional value out of AI tools in SaaS platforms to cover the increased cost. Patri also charges $0.00099/ record processed by the ICP Engine API.
Union.ai, a Seattle-based orchestration platform for AI-driven products, raised $10M in Seed funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round, with select angel investors participating.
Problem to be Solved
Implementing and maintaining the data pipelines necessary to keep AI systems from drifting to inaccuracy can require substantial technical resources. Union.ai claims its platform can scale and optimize machine learning (ML) workflows, data pipelines, and ML-driven products while cutting compute costs by 67%.
How They Use AI
Union.ai does not use AI directly but rather builds a platform meant for companies that do use AI/ML. Their product is a good fit for low-resource model training and deployment, like many of the traditional ML models (some of which still achieve state-of-the-art on many tasks - e.g. XGBoost). Their competitive edge stems from great software rather than novel AI (e.g. clever caching and task-based resource allocation).
Business Model
Union.ai commercializes the open-source AI orchestration library Flyte (which founder Ketan Umare helped build while at Lyft). The company charges SaaS fees for access to Union Cloud, a managed version of the free library.