Insider Brief

• bem, an AI data interface company, raised $3.7M in seed funding led by Uncork Capital to launch and develop its platform.
• bem transforms any input into application-ready data, automating data onboarding and reducing data input timelines by 20–30x for engineering teams.
• Founded by Antonio Bustamante and Upal Saha, bem aims to redefine interoperability and integration, enabling engineers to focus on core product development without worrying about data ingestion.

PRESS RELEASE — SAN FRANCISCO/June 6, 2024 — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Today bem, an AI data interface company building an advanced, easy-to-use platform that functions as a universal communication protocol, announced it raised $3.7M in seed funding. Uncork Capital led the round with participation from Kevin Mahaffey, Roar Ventures, and key angel investors including Garry Tan. Bem will use the seed funding to launch the company and continue their research and development to help further build out the platform.

Bem is an AI data interface that transforms any input, structured or unstructured, into any data shape, without overhead or configuration. Engineering teams use bem today to automate onboardings from legacy systems, remove the need for RPA, and create innovative UX by transforming thousands of emails and text conversations into application-ready data.

Bem was founded by Antonio Bustamante, previously the founder of Silo, and Upal Saha, an engineering manager at Silo, out of a necessity they experienced while working with supply chain customers at Silo. The supply chain industry, like so many others, relies on a wide variety of data inputs and sources both structured and unstructured, and the technology supporting them needs to be able to ingest and transform this data before it can go about the work of performing its functions. Antonio and Upal found themselves time and again building this base layer of data transformation, adjusting it, and maintaining it, and realized that engineering teams across industries were facing the same issues, especially as automation was picking up steam. Bem was founded to facilitate seamless data exchanges between diverse systems, encompassing both human-operated and computer-based operations, thus redefining the scope of interoperability and integration.

“Engineering teams spend about 44% of their time building and then monitoring and maintaining their data pipelines,” said bem co-founder and CEO Antonio Bustamante. “At our core, bem is an AI data interface, redefining the scope of interoperability and integration, to save time and frustration for these teams so that they can focus on what truly matters to their product. Our goal is for engineers to not worry about integrations or data ingestion pipelines ever again — we want them to focus on valuable work for their users.”

When most teams think about integrations, they envision APIs and other embedded systems, but the reality is that 90% of industries are locked into data integrations with random data formats whether that’s invoices or other materials based on natural language protocols. Bem is designed to reduce the data input timeline by 20–30x by taking over building the bottom layer of any tool — the data integration layer — allowing builders to focus on the actual bulk of their product without worrying about data ingesting. Beyond the base data pipeline, bem invests in R&D to continue expanding capabilities as new forms of data are introduced and fine-tunes itself automatically using AI, getting better every time you use it.

“Bem is revolutionizing the building blocks that developers can use when designing their product,” said Andy McLoughlin, Managing Partner at Uncork Capital. “Their work is focused on the future of how machines communicate, regardless of how modern a company’s software is.”

“We’ve been continuously impressed by how quickly the bem team and product have gone from idea to full implementation,” said Tom Jaklitsch, co-founder and CTO at Order. “They pay close attention to detail and are quick to show they care about us as a customer. We’re excited as we ramp up the use of their platform to automate many of our manual e-commerce workflows, and are already starting to see real impact.”

ABOUT BEM

Bem is an advanced, easy-to-use platform that functions as a universal communication protocol. Using bem, engineering teams are able to facilitate seamless data exchanges between diverse systems, encompassing both human-operated and computer-based operations, thus redefining the scope of interoperability and integration, and allowing them to focus on building the more critical components of their tools. Bem was founded by experienced entrepreneurs Antonio Bustamante and Upal Saha who discovered the need for this exact product at their last venture. Bem is funded by Uncork Capital, Kevin Mahaffey, and Roar Ventures.

Contacts

Katie Dolan
[email protected]

SOURCE