Regular updates on the latest VC-backed AI startups. Follow along to stay informed!
Slang, an AI-powered phone answering product, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Homebrew with participation from Stage 2 Capital, Wing VC, Underscore VC, Active Capital, and Collide Capital.
Problem to be Solved
Restaurants, retailers, and other businesses that typically struggle with staffing levels find it difficult to give real-time responses to customer calls. Slang uses AI to answer phone calls, which the company claims can drive more revenue, minimize staff distraction, and improve customer satisfaction.
How They Use AI
Slang uses natural language processing AI to classify customer requests and map them to predefined conversation flows that cover common customer use cases. Also, the company has good text-to-speech models (i.e., their voices sound pretty good).
Business Model
Slang charges subscription fees that scale with the number of calls per month a customer needs. With no long-term contracts and a 30-minute onboarding process, Slang has grown quickly to over 200 customers.
Inflection an AI startup aiming to create “personal AI for everyone” raised $1.3B in growth funding. The round was led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and new investor Nvidia.
Problem to be Solved
We asked Inflection’s personal AI assistant Pi what problem it solved, and got the following response: “In a nutshell, I want to make life easier for people by providing them with information and companionship, in an accessible and engaging way. I can be a personal assistant, a resource for information, a sounding board for ideas, or just a chat buddy when you're feeling bored. Basically, I'm here to help people however I can.”
How They Use AI
Pi is pretty much Inflection’s version of ChatGPT (a transformer-based large language model) but trained with a different purpose in mind. The underlying AI architecture is probably close to identical. Inflection differentiates themselves with their data and training approach. In our experience, Pi feels more personalized and intimate while ChatGPT feels more creative and Bard feels more informed.
Business Model
TBD. Pi says “Inflection is currently funded by venture capital, and I’m not aware of any current plans to monetize the product.” Interestingly, Inflection is set up as a public benefit corporation, which the company says “provides us with the legal mandate to prioritize the well-being and happiness of our users and wider stakeholders above all else.”
Voice.ai, an AI tool for changing voice, raised $3M in Seed Round Funding. Mucker Capital and M13 are leading the round.
Problem to be Solved
Gaming streamers and other content creators sometimes want to change their voice, but classical DSP voice changers and voice modulators are limited and expensive.
How They Use AI
Voice.ai uses speech-to-speech AI models that deliver a broader range of voices than simple voice filters. All we can say is that their AI is probably built using a transformer- or diffusion-based model to learn how to map between the customer’s voice and the target voice.
Business Model
SaaS. And yes, there’s a free trial.