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

Every single 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 by way of the noise by specializing in fixing a really explicit, but widely-shared downside: permitting corporations to make use of generative AI assistants with out compromising their knowledge privateness and safety.

Jamix presents 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, Individuals.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,” stated 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 folks’s knowledge.”

Zitzmann and his co-founder Conglei Shi, who serves as Jamix’s Chief Know-how Officer (CTO), know the enterprise software program area properly with resumes at among the largest names in tech: Zitzmann labored at Google, Instagram and its father or mother firm Meta, which acquired his former firm Kamcord. Shi labored at IBM on its Watson AI group 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 related to your knowledge, your apps, and your APIs,” Zitzmann informed VentureBeat.

He famous that whereas corporations could attempt to use AI instruments with out exposing their knowledge with the nice intention of preserving it safe and secure, 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 data.

“That intern shouldn’t be going to be very efficient, proper?” Zitzmann requested rhetorically. “That’s successfully what AI is as we speak.”

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

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

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

“For 20 years now, there’s been this concept of enterprise search, the place you may have on search bar that’s like Google for all of your company knowledge,” 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 knowledge,” in accordance with Zitzmann. This takes the widespread early generative AI use case of importing a PDF and with the ability to have interaction in a dialog with an AI instrument comparable to ChatGPT to floor particular data or summarize it, however expands it to all of the paperwork that an organization desires its staff to have the ability to entry.

For example, Zitzmann stated customers can ask its AI assistant hooked as much as a recruiting software “what number of candidates do we have now within the engineer pipeline, what number of presents have we made, what number of have been declined?” and obtain the solutions with out having to go hunt by way of the app itself to search out them.

Lastly, in arguably probably the most formidable a part of the providing, Jamix is permitting its AI assistant to “provoke actions” on the person’s behalf inside their office apps, primarily appearing as an AI agent to file bug stories or consider incoming resumes to a specific job itemizing based mostly on how properly they match the job itemizing standards. One other operate is summarizing data from URLs.

All of those capabilities goal to avoid wasting time and scale back the handbook effort required in day by day duties.

Dedicated to person privateness and safety

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

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

“The contractual settlement we have now with these [AI model] suppliers is that they’re not allowed to coach on that [customer] knowledge,” Zitzmann stated.

For purchasers who’re nonetheless extra involved with closed mannequin suppliers, Zitzmann famous that Jamix works with open supply AI fashions as properly, permitting its enterprise prospects 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 best 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 method 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 knowledge privateness and providing flexibility in AI mannequin utilization.

Nakul Mandan, Founder and Associate of Audacious Ventures, shared his help for Jamix’s mission to offer AI assistants that cater to the particular wants of enterprises whereas prioritizing knowledge safety and person permissions.

“We think about a future the place each data employee on the earth could have AI assistants at their disposal, however these must be constructed with enterprise wants in thoughts,” Mandan stated in an announcement 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 preserving knowledge 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 seeking to improve productiveness whereas sustaining strict knowledge safety requirements. The platform’s deep integration with office instruments and its model-agnostic method spotlight Jamix’s dedication to offering versatile and safe AI options for companies.