Ohad Elhelo and Ori Cohen have not done things by the book. They founded their startup Augmented Intelligence (AUI) seven years ago and have remained in stealth until now even though they raised several tens of million dollars from private investors for an AI platform targeting the shopping sector.
Augmented Intelligence is now announcing completion of a $10 million financing round at a company valuation of $350 million, bringing the total amount raised to $44 million. This is a big jump from March 2024 when the company raised $22 million at a company valuation of just $130 million.
While the generative AI models developed by OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are able to produce intelligent answers to complex questions, scan millions of pieces of information and conduct an intelligent conversation with a user, their ability to support a decision involving the purchase of a product - a task that is the holy grail of any big tech company - is lacking, according to Elhelo, and Cohen who announce today together with the completion of their financing round, a joint distribution contract with Google Cloud.
Neuro symbolic model
Augmented Intelligence's AI model is not based on the common model in recent years since OpenAI launched ChapGPT just under two years ago, using transformer architecture for its engine. Augmented Intelligence's engine is based on a "do or don't do" environment based on many years research by the founders of decisions made by consumers.
Elhelo tells "Globes," "The transformer-based language models are good at analyzing language and presenting information, but they have not proven themselves in decision making."
Over the years, the company has developed a model known as "neuro-symbolic," which is, neural-like thinking based on rules that, according to Elhelo, make it possible to help support decision-making, for example in the field of sales. It is basically a smart sales agent or service, the holy grail of companies like Google, Amazon and Salesforce.
Elhelo explains, "If you try to make a decision about which TV screen to purchase or which flight to book based on GPT4 or even Amazon's AI assistant, Rufus, you will encounter a significant difficulty." Elhelo claims that actions such as comparing prices of a product according to certain requirements or even booking a flight according to certain criteria are too difficult operations for the existing language models. "How can you trust that the automated agent will book you a flight that actually lands in New York and that you sit next to the window as you wanted? The technology that exists in the market does not provide you with reliability in this aspect."
But the smart agent developed by Augmented Intelligence prevails over rival automatic engines like Rufus and Salesforce Cloud in these consumer decision making tasks.
The company declines to disclose details about its distribution agreement with Google Cloud but industry estimates are that it will earn AUI between $15 million and $20 million in its first year. Google will not only put AUI's app into its cloud platform app store but will also market it through a joint sales agreement with potential customers in retail and tourism.
AUI will benefit from a central distribution channel, as well as from working on the graphics processors in Google's AI servers. Elhelo says, "While the existing language models based on transformers help to improve the productivity of employees, there is a real thirst for action-oriented AI models such as making decisions about buying online. The need to sell your product inventory is greater among the big tech giants."
As far as is known, the agreement with Google Cloud is not exclusive, meaning it allows either of the companies to sign similar agreements with rival companies.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 30, 2024.
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