Insider Brief
- Kognitos, specializing in generative AI for business automation, has raised $20M in a Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures, increasing their total venture capital to $30M, to advance their vision of business applications written and understood in English by machines.
- The company’s unique approach using a deterministic English interpreter in automation allows organizations to implement generative AI without the need for traditional automation skills, reducing costs and increasing efficiency for clients like PepsiCo and Wipro.
- Kognitos plans to use the new funding to improve its platform’s ability to execute complex business processes and expand its partnerships, with an aim to become a leader in generative AI for business automation and increase platform adoption.
PRESS RELEASE — SAN JOSE, Calif./November 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Kognitos, the trailblazer in generative AI for business automation, today announced the close of a $20M Series A round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Clear Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Wipro Ventures. The fresh funding brings the company’s venture capital raised to date to $30M adding to the seed round closed earlier this year. Founded in 2020, the company aims to build a future where all business applications will be written in English, where machines understand human language natively and where interacting with a computer is as easy as communicating with a human.
AI is accelerating the way business is conducted across all industries. Many of the traditional shortcomings of automation tools including learning curve, cost and time to value are being addressed using the power of generative AI. Kognitos’ approach to automation using a deterministic English interpreter removes the risk of hallucination and biases while providing all the power of generative AI to business users. Now organizations are able to accelerate automation without the need for traditional automation skill sets. Many companies across various manufacturing, logistics, CPG and retail industries are using the product including PepsiCo, Wipro, Century Supply Chain Solutions and Norco Industries. By empowering business users in a language they already know, Kognitos reduces burden on both business users and IT dramatically reducing costs while accelerating business.
“For the last few decades we have been forcing humans to learn the language of the machine through various no-code, low code and RPA platforms. The time has come for the machine to natively understand plain English,” said Binny Gill, Founder and CEO of Kognitos. “No developer should be needed to translate business requirements into automation because now the business requirements become the automation.”
Most businesses today have many document-heavy or coordination-heavy processes that are manual because automating them has been a daunting task with traditional tools. For example, a person in finance who processes a large variety of invoices, purchase orders and contracts on a daily basis finds it hard to explain all the details of what they do to an RPA developer, especially all the edge-cases. Even after automating such processes, the ballooning maintenance costs have resulted in the failure of many projects.
Kognitos uses natural language processing automation (NLPA) to enable business users to automate processes in plain human language. English is now “code.” Kognitos provides a highly scalable bot-less and management-free SaaS platform that can run business processes targeting ERP, CRM and common business applications at scale. There is seamless human-in-the-loop with patented conversational exception handling, removing the burden of business exceptions from IT. The platform dynamically learns from the business users when they handle exceptions, further increasing value to business without the expensive software development life-cycle as experienced in traditional automation tools.
The new funds will be used to enhance the platform’s ability to understand and execute complex business processes, and expand partnerships and integrations with other business applications to improve the platform’s interoperability. These efforts are aimed at establishing Kognitos as a leader in generative AI for business automation and increasing the adoption of the platform.
“Every enterprise needs to embrace AI, and automation in human language will be key to widespread business usage,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “In Kognitos, we are backing a founder we have worked with before who is taking on a bold vision of empowering a billion people to program in natural language where every single business application can be written in English.”
In addition to the new capital, Kognitos also announced the immediate availability of Exception Center, a next generation exception handling interface with the platform aimed at business users. Kognitos also unveiled multi-modal automation functions including voice transcription, image comparison, image manipulation, QR code support, data visualization and PDF form filling among others.
“Working with Kognitos has helped us to automate extremely complex use cases that existing automation solutions on the market have been unable to handle. With the Kognitos AI solution, our team is empowered to automate and even handle unforeseen edge cases without increasing the demand on IT,” said Jim McCullen, CIO at Century Supply Chain Solutions. “We have realized significant productivity gains and further enhanced our VIZIV Supply Chain Optimization Platform by using Kognitos to develop a market leading AI-powered capability within our business. We look forward to expanding our partnership with Kognitos as we become the AI leader in the Global logistics space.”
For additional information, please visit www.kognitos.com.
About Kognitos
Kognitos is the leader in natural language process automation. Founded in 2020, the company aims to build a future where all business applications will be written in English; where machines understand human language natively; and where interacting with a computer is as easy as communicating with a human. Kognitos is bringing seamless automation to billions of business users worldwide. For more information, visit https://www.kognitos.com.
The Kognitos SaaS platform is HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II certified for best-in-class security controls and complies with the AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria.
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