Regular updates on the latest VC-backed AI startups. Follow along to stay informed!
Fixie, a Seattle-based LLM automation platform, raised $17M in Seed funding. Redpoint led the deal, with Madrona Venture Group, Zetta Venture Partners, SignalFire, Bloomberg Beta, and Kearny Jackson participating.
Problem to be Solved
Large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 (LLMs) are good at saying things, but what if we want them to do things? Enter Fixie. Fixie is creating a platform where users can hook up their APIs, tools, and databases to LLMs, giving them the power to perform actions, like schedule calendar appointments, summarize new emails, etc.
How They Use AI
Fixie provides the infrastructure to connect other company’s models to public or user-specific APIs. A few off-the-shelf models they interface with are AI21’s Jurassic-2, GPT-NeoX, and Cohere. The real magic is in the chain of prompts fed into the various models. Any question will trigger a set of thoughts and actions from the language model which are then translated into API calls and eventually into the final output.
Business Model
The marketplace of ready-to-use agents is open and free to use for up to 1,000 API calls per day, after which Fixie charges on a usage-based model.
Parloa, a Berlin-based AI support system for call centers, raised $21.8M in Series A funding. EQT lead, with Newion and Senovo joining the round.
Problem to be Solved
Customer service is notoriously difficult because human experts in call centers are expensive to scale and people hate bad chatbots. Parloa claims to enable contact center workers to deliver better customer service through AI.
How They Use AI
Parloa utilizes AI to automate both phone and messaging conversations. In the event of a phone conversation, the audio gets mapped to text to feed into the LLMs, whose outputs are then mapped back to speech. Parloa claims they fine-tune LLMs on customer information to make the LLMs company specific, however, it could be that they are just searching over company content and feeding relevant info into the LLMs as part of the prompt.
Business Model
Good old-fashioned SaaS. Parloa currently sells subscriptions to big contact centers owned by companies like Decathlon and SwissLife.
Impact Observatory, a Washington DC-based satellite mapping and monitoring solution powered by AI, raised $6M in Seed funding. Esri International lead the deal.
Problem to be Solved
Environmental data used by governments and companies to analyze sustainability risks, which is collected by satellite constellations like European Space Agency Copernicus, is available only in weekly or even yearly snapshots. Impact Observatory wants to use AI to provide persistent space-based data collection.
How They Use AI
Impact Observatory is working with some impressive tech (despite the fact that their website looks like it could be for the DMV). Their applications center around computer vision algorithms for detecting environmental statuses and changes (e.g. deforestation, city growth, etc.).
Business Model
Impact Observatory will sell subscriptions for commercial space-based monitoring services. Because of the company’s nonprofit / research roots, it will also produce yearly updated global maps as a free public good and make its services available at a discount to nonprofits.