Contextual AI, a new AI startup founded by veterans of Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and Hugging Face, has raised $20 million in a seed round. The company will focus on developing specialized artificial intelligence (ASI) that can solve problems faced by businesses. The funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), with participation from Lightspeed, Greycroft, and other angel investors.
Developing Artificial Specialized Intelligence
The founders of Contextual AI, Douwe Kiela and Amanpreet Singh, have experience in AI and large language models (LLMs). They previously worked at Meta Platforms’ FAIR on developing systems for detecting hate speech in memes and the sale of illicit goods on Facebook. At HuggingFace, they worked on LLMs. The duo has a unique focus: developing “artificial specialized intelligence” that can help solve problems faced by businesses.
The founders believe that businesses should not waste resources on models that know irrelevant information such as Shakespeare and quantum physics. Instead, they should focus on developing models that can solve their specific problems. They also took a public shot at the most popular and widely used LLM to date, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which they believe is not suitable for solving complex business problems.
Six Problems Confronting Enterprises
Contextual AI aims to solve six problems faced by businesses that use current LLMs. These problems include data privacy, customizability, hallucinations, compliance, staleness, and latency and cost. Staleness refers to the relatively outdated information contained in leading AI models. For example, ChatGPT does not know anything that happened after September 2021, and the most downloaded model on the HuggingFace hub is BERT, which still thinks that Obama is president.
The founders believe that their specialized AI can help solve these problems by providing customized solutions that are tailored to each business’s specific needs. They also plan to leverage open source software as much as possible and give back to the community in return.
Commitment to Open Source AI Community
Contextual AI’s founders have pledged a commitment to the burgeoning open source AI community. They believe that there should be more players in the market and that it is dangerous to have this technology only in the hands of a few incumbent big tech corporations. They plan to leverage open source software as much as possible and give back to the community in return.
BCV, the lead investor in the seed round, supports Contextual AI’s goals and ambitions and sees enormous potential in the market for enterprise-grade AI. They believe that AI will become ingrained in everything enterprises do in ways that are secure, deeply integrated, and contextual to employee workflows.
Contextual AI’s focus on developing specialized AI to solve specific business problems is a unique approach that could help businesses optimize their resources and solve complex problems. The founders’ commitment to the open source AI community is also commendable and could help promote the development of AI that benefits everyone.
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