Jamix emerges with $3M pre-seed and model-agnostic AI assistant

Each day within the 12 months 2024 is crammed with AI-related information. However Jamix, a brand new San Francisco-based enterprise AI startup based by former Instagram and Airbnb engineers, is hoping to chop via the noise by specializing in fixing a really specific, but widely-shared drawback: permitting corporations to make use of generative AI assistants with out compromising their information privateness and safety.

Jamix gives what it says is a safe, model-agnostic AI assistant designed to boost office productiveness.

Final week, it emerged from stealth with $3 million in pre-seed funding led by Audacious Ventures, with contributions from angel buyers together with Keith Peiris (CEO, Tome), Chris Prucha (Co-founder, Notion & Origin), Oleg Rogynskyy (CEO, Folks.ai), Nate Smith (Founder, Lever), Bobby Lo (Founder, Vurb), Zac Altman (Founder, LoungeBuddy), Neha Sampat (CEO, Contentstack), Nishant Patel (Founder & CTO, Contentstack).

“Most corporations don’t actually have the assets to construct a classy instrument like this,” mentioned co-founder and CEO Matt Zitzmann, in an unique video name interview with VentureBeat final week. “That’s the hole we’re striving to fill on this market, to assist corporations have their very own customized, inside model of ChatGPT or an AI assistant that protects individuals’s information.”

Zitzmann and his co-founder Conglei Shi, who serves as Jamix’s Chief Know-how Officer (CTO), know the enterprise software program house effectively with resumes at a number of the greatest names in tech: Zitzmann labored at Google, Instagram and its mother or father firm Meta, which acquired his former firm Kamcord. Shi labored at IBM on its Watson AI staff and later at Airbnb.

Enhancing office productiveness whereas sustaining safety

Jamix’s philosophy is straightforward: “For AI to actually attain its full potential, it must be linked to your information, your apps, and your APIs,” Zitzmann informed VentureBeat.

He famous that whereas corporations could attempt to use AI instruments with out exposing their information with the nice intention of maintaining it safe and protected, this really severely limits the capabilities of AI to meaningfully enhance and develop their enterprise.

Zitzmann posed a hypothetical scenario about an organization hiring a human intern, however not giving them entry to any of the agency’s company info.

“That intern is just not going to be very efficient, proper?” Zitzmann requested rhetorically. “That’s successfully what AI is right now.”

As a substitute, Jamix’s strategy is to permit its AI assistant to be built-in right into a agency’s present, generally used office software program apps akin to Google Workspace or Notion, and messaging apps together with Slack, and supply info again to the consumer on demand.

This enables Jamix to carry out three broad classes of duties for enterprises:

The primary is search throughout apps: as an alternative of getting the consumer toggle forwards and backwards for a chunk of knowledge they’re in search of, the Jamix search bar returns outcomes from throughout all of the totally different apps it’s linked to by way of API backends, be it an e mail utility, Slack or Google Docs, permitting the consumer to see and entry that info extra rapidly and simply. Jamix refers to those because the enterprise’s “information sources.”

“For 20 years now, there’s been this concept of enterprise search, the place you’ve got on search bar that’s like Google for all of your company information,” Zitzmann defined. “This solves the ache level of ‘I do know it’s someplace, however I don’t know if it’s in my Gmail, Slack, or a Google Doc.’”

The second is “chat with apps and information,” in line with Zitzmann. This takes the widespread early generative AI use case of importing a PDF and having the ability to interact in a dialog with an AI instrument akin to ChatGPT to floor particular info or summarize it, however expands it to all of the paperwork that an organization needs its staff to have the ability to entry.

For example, Zitzmann mentioned customers can ask its AI assistant hooked as much as a recruiting utility “what number of candidates do we’ve within the engineer pipeline, what number of gives have we made, what number of have been declined?” and obtain the solutions with out having to go hunt via the app itself to search out them.

Lastly, in arguably probably the most bold a part of the providing, Jamix is permitting its AI assistant to “provoke actions” on the consumer’s behalf inside their office apps, basically appearing as an AI agent to file bug stories or consider incoming resumes to a selected job itemizing based mostly on how effectively they match the job itemizing standards. One other perform is summarizing info from URLs.

All of those features purpose to save lots of time and scale back the handbook effort required in day by day duties.

Dedicated to consumer privateness and safety

But, by the identical token, Jamix retains a dedication to consumer privateness by encrypting all its clients’ information and inking agreements with AI mannequin suppliers, together with OpenAI for ChatGPT and GPT-3.5/4, to not practice on Jamix consumer information.

In so doing, Jamix’s AI assistant goals to handle key issues surrounding information safety within the integration of AI into office operations.

“The contractual settlement we’ve with these [AI model] suppliers is that they’re not allowed to coach on that [customer] information,” Zitzmann mentioned.

For patrons who’re nonetheless extra involved with closed mannequin suppliers, Zitzmann famous that Jamix works with open supply AI fashions as effectively, permitting its enterprise clients to run the AI assistant on their very own non-public clouds or on premises.

Jamix’s dedication to mannequin agnosticism permits it to adapt to the fast-paced evolution of AI expertise. This technique allows companies to leverage the simplest and cost-efficient AI fashions with out being constrained to a single supplier, facilitating simple adaptation to new applied sciences.

Notable backers

The $3M pre-seed funding, led by Audacious Ventures with participation from a number of notable angel buyers, signifies sturdy business help for Jamix’s strategy to AI within the office.

Zitzmann, Co-founder and CEO, emphasised the importance of launching a product designed to combine deeply into firm operations whereas safeguarding information privateness and providing flexibility in AI mannequin utilization.

Nakul Mandan, Founder and Companion of Audacious Ventures, shared his help for Jamix’s mission to supply AI assistants that cater to the precise wants of enterprises whereas prioritizing information safety and consumer permissions.

“We think about a future the place each data employee on the planet may have AI assistants at their disposal, however these should be constructed with enterprise wants in thoughts,” Mandan mentioned in a press release offered to VentureBeat. “Jamix’s AI assistant helps customers search and work together with the data of their organizations and, moreover, automates duties for them. They accomplish all of this whereas maintaining information safety and permissions in thoughts.”

With its current funding and product launch, Jamix goals to supply a brand new answer within the AI assistant marketplace for corporations trying to improve productiveness whereas sustaining strict information safety requirements. The platform’s deep integration with office instruments and its model-agnostic strategy spotlight Jamix’s dedication to offering versatile and safe AI options for companies.