Latest news with #ThielFellow
Yahoo
24-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Who covers the damage when an AI agent goes rogue? This startup has an insurance policy for that
Today, the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) is emerging from stealth with a $15 million seed round led by Nat Friedman at NFDG, with participation from Emergence, Terrain, and notable angels including Anthropic cofounder Ben Mann and former CISOs from Google Cloud and MongoDB. The company's goal? Build the insurance, audit, and certification infrastructure needed to bring AI agents safely into the enterprise world. That's right: Insurance policies for AI agents. AIUC cofounder and CEO Rune Kvist says that insurance for agents—that is, autonomous AI systems capable of making decisions and taking action without constant human oversight—is about to be big business. Previously the first product and go-to-market hire at Anthropic in 2022, Kvist's founding team also includes CTO Brandon Wang, a Thiel Fellow who previously founded a consumer underwriting business, and Rajiv Dattani a former McKinsey partner who led work in the global insurance sector, and was COO of METR, a research non-profit that evaluated OpenAI and Anthropic's models before deployment. Creating financial incentives to reduce risk of AI agent adoption At the heart of AIUC's approach is a new risk and safety framework called AIUC-1, designed specifically for AI agents. It pulls together existing standards like the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, the EU AI Act, and MITRE's ATLAS threat model—then layers on auditable, agent-specific safeguards. The idea is simple: make it easy for enterprises to adopt AI agents with the same kind of trust signals they expect in cloud security or data privacy. 'The important thing about insurance is that it creates financial incentives to reduce the risk,' Kvist told Fortune. 'That means that we're going to be tracking, where does it go wrong, what are the problems you're solving. And insurers can often enforce that you do take certain steps in order to get certified.' While there other startups also currently working on AI insurance products, Kvist said none are building the kind of agent standard that prevents risks like AIUC-1. 'Insurance & standards go hand-in-hand to create confidence around AI adoption,' he said. 'AIUC-1 creates a standard for AI adoption,' said John Bautista, partner at law firm Orrick and who helped create the standard. 'As businesses enter a brave new world of AI, there's a ton of legal ambiguities that hold up adoption. With new laws and frameworks constantly emerging, companies need one clear standard that pulls it all together and makes adoption massively simple,' he said. A need for independent vendors The story of American progress, he added, is also a story of insurance. Benjamin Franklin founded the country's first mutual fire insurance company in response to devastating house fires. In the 20th century, specialized players like UL Labs emerged from the insurance industry to test the safety of electric appliances. Car insurers built crash-test standards that gave birth to the modern auto industry. AIUC is betting that history is about to repeat. 'It's not Toyota that does the car crash testing, it's independent bodies.' Kvist pointed out. 'I think there's a need for an independent ecosystem of companies that are answering [the question], can we trust these AI agents?' To make that happen, AIUC will offer a trifecta: standards, audits, and liability coverage. The AIUC-1 framework creates a technical and operational baseline. Independent audits test real-world performance—by trying to get agents to fail, hallucinate, leak data, or act dangerously. And insurance policies cover customers and vendors in the event an agent causes harm, with pricing that reflects how safe the system is. If an AI sales agent accidentally exposes customer personally identifiable information, for example, or if an AI assistant in finance fabricates a policy or misquotes tax information, this type of insurance policy could cover the fallout. The financial incentive, Kvist explained, is the point. Just like consumers get a better car insurance rate for having airbags and anti-lock brakes, AI systems that pass the AIUC-1 audit could get better terms on insurance, in Kvist's view. That pushes AI vendors toward better practices, faster—and gives enterprises a concrete reason to adopt sooner, before their competitors do. Using insurance to align incentives AIUC's view is that the market, not just government, can drive responsible development. Top-down regulation is 'hard to get right,' said Kvist. But leaving it all to companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google doesn't work either—voluntary safety commitments are already being walked back. Insurance creates a third way to align incentives and evolves with the technology, he explained. Kvist likens AIUC-1 to SOC-2, the security certification standard that gave startups a way to signal trust to enterprise buyers. He imagines a world in which AI agent liability insurance becomes as common—and necessary—as cyber insurance is today, predicting a $500 billion market by 2030, eclipsing even cyber insurance. AIUC is already working with several enterprise customers and insurance partners (AIUC said it could disclose the names yet), and is moving quickly to become the industry benchmark for AI agent safety. Investors like Nat Friedman agree. As the former CEO of GitHub, Friedman saw the trust issues firsthand when launching GitHub Copilot. 'All his customers were wary of adopting it,' Kvist recalls. 'There were all these IP risks.' As a result, Friedman had been looking for an AI insurance startup for a couple of years. After a 90-minute pitch meeting, he said he wanted to invest—which he did, in a seed round in June, before Friedman moved to join Alexandr Wang at Mark Zuckerberg's new Meta Superintelligence Labs. In a few years, said Kvist, insuring AI agents will be mainstream. 'These agents are making a much bigger promise, which is 'we're going to do the work for you,'' he said. 'We think the liability becomes much bigger, and therefore the interest is much bigger.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
08-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Context Launches the World's First AI-Native Office Suite to Automate 2.5 Trillion Hours of Annual Knowledge Work
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Context unveils the world's first AI-native office suite powered by its proprietary Context Engine, directly addressing the estimated 2.5 trillion hours humanity spends annually on repetitive, automatable office tasks. Built entirely from the ground up to leverage state-of-the-art long-context AI, Context seamlessly integrates generative agents across familiar productivity tools, dramatically accelerating document creation, research, data analysis and presentations. "Office software has barely evolved since the 1990s, leaving billions of hours trapped in manual, repetitive processes,' said Semrai. Founded by Joseph Semrai, a Thiel Fellow who left Stanford at age 20, Context emerges from stealth with substantial backing, an $11 million seed round at a $70 million valuation, led by Lux Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. Unlike legacy office tools that retrofit AI as incremental add-ons, Context entirely reimagines the software ecosystem for a generative future, setting new benchmarks in intelligence, context-awareness and productivity. "Office software has barely evolved since the 1990s, leaving billions of hours trapped in manual, repetitive processes,' said Semrai. 'Context's AI-native workspace frees knowledge workers to focus on uniquely human tasks: strategizing, decision-making, and creativity, while intelligent agents handle the rest." Powered by the Context Engine Context's pioneering Context Engine is inspired by the human hippocampus, offering unprecedented long-context understanding without performance degradation, capable of handling contexts exceeding 50 million tokens. Unlike traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods, Context's proprietary swarm agents dynamically traverse entire organizational knowledge bases, uncovering deep connections and generating precise, insightful outputs in seconds. Strategic Partnerships and Security Leadership Working with Qualcomm, Context leverages Snapdragon™ NPUs for local, secure, and compliant deployments, abstracting away cloud inference costs and meeting stringent enterprise security standards, including SOC-2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. 'This is a great example of an agentic experience. It's a breakthrough for productivity,' said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, presenting centerstage at Computex 2025. 'While frontier labs have demonstrated AI's potential, Context transforms potential into reality," said Shahin Farshchi, PhD, General Partner at Lux Capital. 'Context's integration of multi-modal AI creates revolutionary efficiencies, empowering industries like finance, consulting, and law to elevate their client offerings and significantly increase human bandwidth for strategic tasks.' Instant Productivity Across Familiar Platforms At launch, Context supports comprehensive integrations with over 300 enterprise applications, including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Slack, ServiceNow and Snowflake, offering immediate familiarity and zero friction adoption. Key capabilities include: AI Documents: Automate professional-grade reports, proposals, and summaries. AI Slides: Generate executive-ready presentations with compelling narratives. AI Spreadsheets: Analyze complex datasets and produce actionable visualizations instantly. Deep Research & Enterprise Search: Rapidly surface and synthesize insights across vast internal and external data sources. Availability and Getting Started Context is available broadly today. Interested organizations can request detailed demos at About Context Founded in 2024 by Joseph Semrai, Context is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company combines generative AI, advanced long-context reasoning, and secure, local-first infrastructure to redefine productivity tools. Backed by Lux Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, General Catalyst, and leading angel investors, Context aims to fundamentally shift how enterprises, governments, and individuals collaborate with intelligent machines.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Context gets $11M to build an AI-powered office suite
Context, a startup building an AI-powered office suite, on Wednesday announced that it raised $11 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and General Catalyst. The round, which brings the company's total raised to around $15.75 million, values Context at $70 million. Founder Joseph Semrai, a Thiel Fellow, started working on Context in 2024 after he realized that current digital office suites are not well suited to take advantage of AI models. "[W]e have a bunch of disparate applications that aren't necessarily built keeping the power of [AI models] in mind," Semrai told TechCrunch in a phone interview. "We want to take advantage of the fact that [models] can understand large context windows and use multiple applications at the same time to get the best result." Over the past few years, many startups in the productivity and browsing space have made user interface changes to adopt a chat-forward experience, largely thanks to the rise of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT. Semrai thinks that Context, which is similarly chat-focused, can be a powerful tool for workers using an office suite, similar to how Cursor has become a useful application for programmers. Office suite makers like Google and Microsoft have infused AI into their applications. Canva, which has been in the creative space historically, is also designing products that suit all kinds of office work with AI at the center. Notion, meanwhile, is building an enterprise workplace with an AI search and research mode. Many of these products offer connectors to third-party applications. But Semrai said that while connecting to sources and retrieving data is becoming commoditized, new-age tools don't always deliver capabilities that help with analysis. That, he said, is where Context comes in — it's designed to make it easier for users to reason over the data they fetch from various sources and make decisions based on that. Context has a simple interface with a chat box in the center. You can ask the AI tool to perform research derived from your documents, integrations, and web knowledge. You can then ask it to convert all this to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, while continuing to interact with it to generate different artifacts. Context also offers a Python interpreter to let you run code. The goal isn't necessarily replacing a fully-featured office suite like Microsoft 365. Rather, Context is going after a market not well-served by the current crop of tools, according to Semrai. For example, unlike many AI-powered data analysis products, Context will soon be able to work offline, enabling simple analysis and document drafting based on existing data and documents via Context's desktop client. Users can try out Context for free with 50 credits, one workspace, and 10 team members. Alternatively, they can pay $20 per month to get 2,000 credits with no limits on workspaces and team members. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
TechCrunch
28-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Context gets $11M to build an AI-powered office suite
Context, a startup building an AI-powered office suite, on Wednesday announced that it raised $11 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and General Catalyst. The round, which brings the company's total raised to around $15.75 million, values Context at $70 million. Founder Joseph Semrai, a Thiel Fellow, started working on Context in 2024 after he realized that current digital office suites are not well suited to take advantage of AI models. '[W]e have a bunch of disparate applications that aren't necessarily built keeping the power of [AI models] in mind,' Semrai told TechCrunch in a phone interview. 'We want to take advantage of the fact that [models] can understand large context windows and use multiple applications at the same time to get the best result.' Over the past few years, many startups in the productivity and browsing space have made user interface changes to adopt a chat-forward experience, largely thanks to the rise of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT. Semrai thinks that Context, which is similarly chat-focused, can be a powerful tool for workers using an office suite, similar to how Cursor has become a useful app for programmers. Context founder Joseph Semrai Image Credits: Context Office suite makers like Google and Microsoft have infused AI into their applications. Canva, which has been in the creative space historically, is also designing products that suit all kinds of office work with AI at the center. Notion, meanwhile, is building an enterprise workplace with an AI search and research mode. Many of these products offer connectors to third-party applications. But Semrai said that while connecting to sources and retrieving data is becoming commoditized, new-age tools don't always deliver capabilities that help with analysis. That, he said, is where Context comes in — it's designed to make it easier for users to reason over the data they fetch from various sources and make decisions based on that. Context has a simple interface with a chat box in the center. You can ask the AI tool to perform research based on your documents, integrations, and web knowledge. You can then ask it to convert all this to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, while continuing to interact with it to generate different artifacts. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Context also offers a Python interpreter to let you run code. The goal isn't necessarily replacing a fully-featured office suite like Microsoft 365. Rather, Context is going after a market not well-served by the current crop of tools. For example, unlike many AI-powered data analysis products, Context will soon be able to work offline, Semrai said, enabling simple analysis and document drafting based on existing data and documents via Context's desktop app. Users can try out Context for free with 50 credits, one workspace, and 10 team members. Alternatively, they can pay $20 per month to get 2,000 credits with no limits on workspaces and team members.
NDTV
24-04-2025
- Business
- NDTV
AI Startup Founder Lucy Guo Replaces Taylor Swift As World's Youngest Self-Made Woman Billionaire
Taylor Swift claimed the title of the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world in 2023. But two years later, she has been overtaken by Lucy Guo, the 30-year-old cofounder of Scale AI, according to Forbes. Ms Guo, a computer science college dropout, is also one of only six self-made women billionaires on the planet who are under the age of 40. In 2018, she also made it to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. Currently, her net worth stands at 1.3 billion. Who is Lucy Guo? Ms Guo cofounded artificial intelligence firm Scale AI in 2016, when she was 21 years old, alongside then-19-year-old Alexandr Wang. While Mr Wang became CEO, Ms Guo ran the operations and product design teams at the San Francisco startup. But the same year, the duo disagreed about how the company was being run, and Mr Wang reportedly fired Ms Guo. After leaving the firm, the 30-year-old held on to most of her stake in the company while pursuing her next startup. According to Forbes, she still owns an estimated stake of 5% of Scale AI, which is now worth nearly $1.2 billion. The outlet estimates Ms Guo is worth $1.3 billion, considering her stake in Scale AI and her holding in her second startup, Passes. "I don't really think about it much, it's a bit wild. Too bad it's all on paper haha," Ms Guo told Forbes. Ms Guo is now one of only six self-made women billionaires on the planet who are under the age of 40. She is also the only one who's made the bulk of her fortune from a company she left years ago. Ms Guo is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied computer science and human-computer interactions at Carnegie Mellon University, but dropped out before graduating to become a Thiel Fellow - a program sponsored by billionaire investor Peter Thiel. Before finding Scale AI, Ms Guo worked as a product designer at question-and-answer firm Quora, where she met Mr Wang. She then left Quora and worked briefly at Snapchat doing product design before she and Mr Wang decided to cofound Scale AI in 2016. After leaving Scale, she started a small venture capital firm called Backend Capital to invest in early-stage companies. Then, in 2022, she started her own business called Passes, a platform for creators and celebrities to connect with fans, who pay for online chats and videos.
