Two former executives of Humane, the AI hardware startup, have launched a new artificial intelligence software venture called Infactory, which has successfully raised $4 million at a $25 million valuation.
Brooke Hartley Moy, previously Humane’s strategic partnerships lead, and Ken Kocienda, former head of product engineering, are the co-founders of this new enterprise.
Infactory aims to revolutionize fact-checking with its AI-powered search engine, designed to search both enterprise databases and the open web in a transparent and explainable manner. The startup is targeting enterprise customers in sectors such as finance, insurance, SaaS, healthcare services, and media.
According to CNBC, Hartley Moy, now Infactory’s CEO, explained that the opportunity to build such a product was more suited to an enterprise environment rather than a consumer hardware company. The lukewarm reception of Humane’s AI Pin, which was criticized for being untrustworthy and not very useful, did not deter the duo. Instead, their departure from Humane was driven by the business opportunities they identified during their tenure.
Humane, which is currently seeking a buyer, had raised over $200 million in funding from notable backers including Microsoft, LG’s venture arm, Tiger Global, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Hartley Moy brings experience from her previous roles at Salesforce, Slack, and Google, where she focused on software partnerships with cloud providers. Kocienda, Infactory’s CTO, spent over 15 years at Apple and was the principal engineer behind the original iPhone’s keyboard autocorrect feature.
Infactory’s seed round was led by Bee Partners with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and others. The funding also included a small special-purpose vehicle (SPV), a common funding type for AI companies.
Currently in alpha status, Infactory is working with design partners to refine its product before a broader launch later this year. The startup aims to meet the high standards of accuracy, trustworthiness, and quality required by businesses. Infactory’s AI chatbot is designed to provide precise and reliable answers by preparing data in a way that AI models can analyze more accurately.
For example, a doctor could use Infactory to check potential drug interactions for a patient on multiple medications, ensuring the information is accurate and sourced from the company’s internal data.
In an era where data from databases, web, and mobile applications is not well-primed for natural language models, Infactory is focused on using AI to enhance enterprise data analysis.
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