(VectorMine/Shutterstock)
Seek AI announced it has raised $7.5 million in pre-seed and seed funding. The company says it will use the new capital to accelerate product development and support its mission of making data accessible to anyone in an organization via an NLP interface.
The company’s natural language interface allows business users to access and query data through a question-and-answer format, which can relieve data teams from repetitive coding tasks and speed up business processes. The interface can be accessed through email, Slack, text, and several CRM systems. Launched last October, Seek AI claims to have more than a dozen pilots with tech, fintech, and consumer brands customers, whom it says range from startups to Fortune 100.
“Our vision, since day one, has been to automate mundane but critical processes and workflows so that data stakeholders can get the data they need fast, and data teams can focus more on strategic efforts,” said founder and CEO Sarah Nagy. “As Seek continues to grow, it is crucial to have growth partners who understand the complexities of automation and data accessibility and share the same vision for applied AI. This funding will help us improve upon our product and reach more businesses in an array of expanding industries.”
(Source: Seek AI)
Seek AI bills itself as an intelligent data layer that uses generative AI, specifically the deep learning foundation models that are the basis of OpenAI’s DALL-E and GPT-3 and feature up to 175 billion ML parameters. These powerful models enable code generation via natural language commands for database querying. The company says its technology is adaptable to each customer’s environment and usage patterns.
“Seek’s analytics automation platform, which combines state-of-the-art AI code generation with the right workflow product to solve clear customer pain, is a leading example of the ‘Software 3.0′ paradigm,” says Sarah Guo, founder at Conviction Partners. “When we saw Seek’s execution velocity and customer enthusiasm for the Seek value proposition, we immediately wanted to invest.”
This investment round saw participation from notable tech industry players. It was led by Guo’s Conviction Partners, the new fund she started after departing from Greylock Ventures. Boston-based Battery Ventures co-led the round, and other participants included former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia, dbt Labs CEO Tristan Handy, Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, and NJP Ventures.
“We were immediately drawn to Seek’s innovative use of generative AI to solve a common business problem: how to empower teams to be more data-driven without overwhelming the data team,” says Brandon Gleklen, principal at Battery Ventures.
Muglia believes a critical next step for rounding out the modern data stack is the development of comprehensive semantic models that define and connect the data model more closely with business processes: “Over time, these semantic models will become the point of reference that defines how a business operates,” he said. “Because every organization is different, Seek applies deep learning to help companies develop and describe their unique semantic model. I am excited about the long-term product vision of Seek and proud to be supporting the team on this journey.”
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