Regular updates on the latest VC-backed AI startups. Follow along to stay informed!
Sixfold, a developer of AI-powered tools for underwriters, raised $6.5M in Seed Round funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the deal, with Crystal Venture Partners participating.
Problem to be Solved
Because of how manual and time-intensive the underwriting process is, insurers can’t provide quotes on all the opportunities that come their way. Rather than attempt to automate underwriting decision-making, Sixfold is attempting to make it easier and quicker for underwriters to access relevant information from disparate sources.
How They Use AI
Sixfold appears to be a straightforward LangChain application. At a high level, they scrape company websites and use generative AI LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT) to summarize the business and industry it operates in. They also perform semantic matching (think OpenAI embeddings) to match business descriptions to relevant insurance information (e.g. NAICS). If you’re not sure how semantic matching works, be sure to read our vector database deep dive!
Business Model
Pricing details are not published (and the company is likely pre-revenue), but Sixfold will likely monetize via classic SaaS.
Figure, an AI robotics company, raised $70M in Series A funding. The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital and joined by Aliya Capital, Bold Capital Partners, Tamarack Global, FJ Labs, and KUKA Robotics CEO Till Reuter.
Problem to be Solved
Human labor shortages cause most supply chain hangups. Figure aims to deploy robots to complete tasks previously left to humans, starting with the structured, repetitive, and often dangerous tasks in warehouses.
How They Use AI
Figure focuses on robotics and may potentially utilize AI technology for tasks such as computer vision—just like how self-driving cars “see” their environment.
Business Model
The company will presumably make money by selling robots to business customers, possibly with some subscription revenue for either hardware or software, but it is too early to know.
Boombox, a creator platform for remote musicians, raised $7M in Seed Round funding. The round was led by Forerunner with participation from super{set} startup studio and Ulu Ventures.
Problem to be Solved
Remote musicians use disparate productivity apps and storage systems that weren’t built for their needs and can’t participate in the creative process. Boombox is trying to reimagine productivity specifically for music producers, supported by the creative capabilities of generative AI.
How They Use AI
Boombox uses AI to automate and assist in some of the basic, building-block tasks of songwriting/producing. “Boombot can help you spitball lyrics, song titles, even generate chord progressions and MIDI files for you to get started with.” Generating lyrics and song titles is a straightforward ChatGPT-like application. As for generating music, they are probably using diffusion models—the same tech used to generate the viral song “Heart on My Sleeve” which sounds like a Drake & The Weeknd collab.
Business Model
SaaS. Musicians can get started for free, and upgrade to a $12.99 per month or $24.99 per month plan if they need more storage and additional features.