A four-year-old Swiss startup has raised a large chunk of change to capitalize on the burgeoning “agentic AI” motion.
Unique stated on Thursday that it has raised $30 million in a Collection A funding spherical that was led by London-based VC agency DN Capital and CommerzVentures, the funding offshoot of Germany’s Commerzbank.
“Agentic AI” is among the many biggest trends in expertise proper now, although there isn’t a one definition of what an AI agent really is. The core underlying idea is that an AI agent needs to be able to way more than a easy chatbot, with the power to make selections and do a spread of duties — something from doing your online shopping and submitting expense stories to improving efficiency in factories.
Based in Zurich in 2021 by CEO Manuel Grenacher, CCO Michelle Heppler, and CTO Andreas Hauri (pictured above), Distinctive desires to energy an agentic AI workforce for monetary companies similar to banking, insurance coverage, and personal fairness.
This implies automating workflows throughout areas similar to analysis, compliance, and KYC (“know your buyer”). Distinctive gives a bunch of customizable AI brokers out-the-box, one in every of which is an investment research agent that pulls on inside and exterior data to supply solutions to natural-language queries.
There’s additionally a due diligence agent, which analyzes paperwork similar to assembly transcripts and compares them with previous evaluations to recommend potential questions that financial institution personnel ought to ask.
The corporate was initially centered on AI-powered video for sales teams, however in the intervening years it advanced into one thing akin to a “co-pilot for finance groups.” And in 2023, Distinctive went live with Swiss non-public nationwide financial institution Pictet, which Distinctive additionally counts as a strategic investor.
Distinctive additionally has different big-name Swiss monetary establishments as clients, together with UBP and Graubündner Kantonalbank.
With a recent $30 million within the financial institution, Distinctive says it plans to speed up its worldwide growth, with a selected give attention to the U.S. market. The corporate has raised a complete of $53 million so far.
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