Pryon Inc., an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) startup, today announced it is coming out of stealth mode. Driven by the team that designed and built the core technologies behind Amazon Alexa, IBM Watson, and other industry-leading AI platforms, Pryon is creating an Augmented Intelligence solution for the enterprise that combines the strengths of people and machines.
“Given the accelerating pace of technological change, speed of innovation, and increasing number of agile competitors, businesses are struggling to work at the necessary scale and speed,” said Igor Jablokov, Pryon’s founder and CEO. “Today’s employees are hampered by cumbersome and slow interfaces, siloed information, and old methods of working. In this environment, companies need new ways to combine the individual strengths of humans and machines to remain competitive.”
Pryon is a portfolio company in Engage, an independent, early-stage venture fund and growth program that gives entrepreneurs what they need most — customers and market access. Engage Ventures’ founding partners contributing capital, expertise, time and resources include AT&T, Chick-fil-A, Cox Enterprises, Delta Air Lines, Georgia-Pacific, Georgia Power Foundation, Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Invesco Ltd., Tech Square Ventures, The Home Depot, and UPS.
“At Engage, we partner and invest in companies that we can help gain a unique strategic advantage through our partners,” said Thiago Olson, Engage Ventures’ managing director. “Igor and the Pryon team represent a unique mix of disruptive visionaries with experience solving complex, large-scale enterprise challenges.”
Pryon is leveraging its experience in machine learning (ML) to create an enterprise solution that goes far beyond today’s helpful, but limited bots, robotic process automation (RPA) tools, and voice assistants. The company’s augmented intelligence platform enables and supports a secure, natural language, and voice-based interactive agent for employees. This agent works across numerous devices, improves worker productivity, optimizes performance, increases engagement, and becomes more intelligent.
In the most recent Fortune survey of 500 CEOs, 81percent cited “artificial intelligence and machine learning” as either “very important” or “extremely important” to the future of their companies, up from just 54 percent in 2016. Pryon is already engaged with several Fortune 500 companies and has proofs of concepts delivering value at the world’s top communications, financial services, and logistics companies. The company’s near-term goal is to lead the Augmented Intelligence market, which is currently valued at $3.5 billion.
Taking the AI market to the next phase of Augmented Intelligence is possible because of Pryon’s seed round funding of $4.5M. Key investors include Greycroft Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, BootstrapLabs, and Engage Ventures.
“The vast majority of AI startups are focused on the consumer market,” noted Ian Sigalow, Co-Founder Partner at Greycroft. “With Pryon, we saw the opportunity to build something even greater for the enterprise. While this will require overcoming security, reliability, and availability challenges, we believe Pryon has a significant head start with its Augmented Intelligence platform.”
Added Colin Beirne, partner at Two Sigma Ventures: “Pryon exemplifies the type of vision and people we look for in early-stage, applied AI companies. Augmented Intelligence in the enterprise represents a significant opportunity, and we believe Igor and this team are uniquely equipped with the experience to build this technology. We’re proud to be investors in Pryon, and we are excited to contribute our industry perspective and technical expertise to support their growth.”
About Pryon Inc.
Pryon is a privately-held enterprise AI and machine learning company. Driven by the team that designed and built the core human language technologies behind Amazon Alexa and IBM Watson, Pryon is creating an Augmented Intelligence platform that combines the strengths of people and machines. Using Pryon’s secure, natural language, and voice-based interactive agent, businesses will improve the intelligence, performance, and productivity of their workers. To learn more about Pryon, please visit: https://www.pryon.ai