AI Hustle: News on Open AI, ChatGPT, Midjourney, NVIDIA, Anthropic, Open Source LLMs: Pryon's Game-Changer: $100M Funding to Transform Enterprise Data Analysis

Welcome to the OpenAI podcast, the podcast that opens up the world of AI in a quick and

concise manner.

Tune in daily to hear the latest news and breakthroughs in the rapidly evolving world

of artificial intelligence.

If you've been following the podcast for a while, you'll know that over the last six

months I've been working on a stealth AI startup.

Of the hundreds of projects I've covered, this is the one that I believe has the greatest

potential, so today I'm excited to announce AIBOX.

AIBOX is a no-code AI app building platform paired with the App Store for AI that lets

you monetize your AI tools.

The platform lets you build apps by linking together AI models like chatGPT, mid-journey,

and 11Labs.

Eventually, we'll integrate with software like Gmail, Trello, and Salesforce so you

can use AI to automate every function in your organization.

To get notified when we launch and be one of the first to build on the platform, you

can join the wait list at AIBOX.AI, the link is in the show notes.

We are currently raising a seed round of funding.

If you're an investor that is focused on disruptive tech, I'd love to tell you more

about the platform.

You can reach out to me at jaden at AIBOX.AI, I'll leave that email in the show notes.

Pryon is an emerging startup focused on AI-driven solutions for mining insights from enterprise

knowledge bases.

And they recently, like I mentioned, have just raised $100 million in funding.

And this was spearheaded by Thompson Tolle's US Initiative Technology Fund.

I think this significant capital injection aims to really boost Pryon's overall growth

trajectory.

Plans include expanding its current workforce of 100 people, enhancing its international

footprint and amplifying its strategic collaboration.

So inside, allegedly, some insider sources have been talking to the journalists.

They said that this latest round propels the company's total funding to $137 million

and elevates its post-money valuation to between $500 million and $750 million.

So the vision behind Pryon really comes from its founder, Igor Jacoblov, who's a seasoned

entrepreneur who formerly headed the multi-modal AI research division at IBM.

He went into retirement for the, I just talked into him the other day, he went into retirement

and then he was like, had to come out of retirement because he was mad that no one was doing a

bunch of important things in AI that he saw needed to be done.

He's been in this space for a long time.

None of it's new.

He's actually a really funny guy.

If you ever listen to him talk, he spoke at the AI for a conference that I went to in

Vegas this summer.

And it's kind of funny because like everything he was saying, you could just see he was like

perpetually offending a lot of people.

And I just love someone like that, not saying mean insults, but like his opinions on AI and

how this isn't actually that cool and that actually is way bigger a deal than most people

think.

I could see it was just like, I don't know, offending a bunch of like people in big corporations

that thought they were the greatest thing ever.

Anyways, it's kind of funny.

So his previous venture, Yap, was a voice recognition startup.

It's kind of, you know, pre-series and it was acquired by Amazon in 2011, serving pretty

much as a catalyst for Alexa's development.

So interestingly, the moniker Pryon or that name has its origins in the code name Amazon

used for Alexa's foundational speech engine.

So he just kind of, you know, stole their code name and made that the name of his company.

In any case, though not strictly a voice assistant, Pryon functions as a specialized assistant.

The platform operates as a quote unquote knowledge fabric capable of interfacing with third party

chatbots or channels.

It accepts various types of data, including audio, image, text, video and transforms it

into a searchable and usable format compatible with, you know, connected front end systems.

So Igor kind of likens Pryon's functionality to Kendra, which is Amazon's AI and machine

learning driven enterprise search service.

Both platforms employ, you know, connectors to unify and index a broad array of data from

different databases.

However, Pryon claims an edge in accuracy, speed and scale.

So according to Igor, Pryon is twice as accurate in just data, 10 times faster and can index

billions of documents, far surpassing Kendra's limit of 100,000 documents.

And to be honest, I think Igor is probably spot on with this.

It's a guy that like he, he calls himself a troll.

He's like, you'll never kill me.

I'm just like the troll.

I will always beat people because I'm just in my cave working hard.

You know, he's just a good guy, like, man, Igor just brings a smile to my face.

In any case, one of the, this is a quote from him.

He said, one of the platform's distinct advantages is that it overlays existing systems, organizations

don't need to port their content into the Pryon platform to retrain and users simply

point to a data repository and the platform generates an AI model based on that content.

It even understands legacy content through its computer vision, optical character recognition

and handwriting recognition capabilities.

Come on guys.

That's insane.

Right.

Like you don't have to import everything into his platform to train your model.

You just pointed out where your data is sitting and it's going to train the model for you.

And if it's like legacy old data that isn't properly like formatted, it's going to use

its computer vision.

So very, very cool, really great innovation.

I can see why they're raising this is, this is our series B right now.

See right, I can see why they're raising 100 million on the series B.

So Pryon also prioritizes data privacy and leaves no footprints of its indexing operations.

The platform allows customer defined parameters for data inclusion, ensuring that only legally

entitled content is incorporated.

Again, something a lot of big companies are struggling to grapple with.

Igor said there's always attribution to authorship and ownership.

So I think despite some really stiff competition from well-established platforms like Amazon's

Kendra, Microsoft's SharePoint Syntax, as well as emerging startups like Habia, Kagi,

Andy, and Glean, Pryon seems to be carving out a really strong position for itself with

annual recurring revenue reportedly in the seven figures and a clientele list featuring

people like Dell, NVIDIA, Westinghouse.

I think Pryon really is kind of showing a promising signs of really robust growth.

I think this is going to be a big winner and why it's kind of like, I don't know, Igor

is like the developer hacker kind of old school version of Elon on this specific area

of AI models, I would say.

I think the company is going to be successful because Igor is really quite prolific and

very forward thinking.

He's seen a lot of what's happened in the past and is very good at forecasting where

it needs to go.

So I think he's going to get stuff done a lot better and faster than other companies.

I think he's going to be a lot more agile than people like Amazon and Microsoft, even

though those are the people he's currently up against.

So he recently said, quote, Pryon is one of the few AI native companies designed from

the outset for enterprise application.

Its unique architecture allows it to operate effectively even in highly regulated environments

ranging from the energy sector to government agencies.

He's worked a lot with government agencies.

I went to one talk in particular where there was a board, he was on the board.

There was someone from the Department of Defense on the board, someone from the Coast Guard.

Anyways, people were asking questions and the government officials, their faces go blank

and they're like, I can't comment on that and Igor, who has worked extensively with

the military in other areas, is like, the reason they can't comment on that is because

what they're really trying to say is blah, blah, blah, blah, and you just give you the

answer that you actually wanted to hear, but a government official can't say it.

Anyways, very cool guy, very cool company.

I think Pryon is going to prime to do some really cool things.

So big congratulations to the whole team at Pryon on raising $100 million.

If you're looking for an innovative and creative community of people using ChatGPT, you need

to join our ChatGPT creators community.

I'll drop a link in the description to this podcast.

We'd love to see you there where we share tips and tricks of what is working in ChatGPT.

It's a lot easier than a podcast as you can see screenshots, you can share and comment

on things that are currently working.

So if this sounds interesting to you, check out the link in the comment.

We'd love to have you in the community.

Thanks for joining me on the OpenAI podcast.

It would mean the world to me if you would rate this podcast wherever you listen to your

podcasts and I'll see you tomorrow.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.