Enterprise AI consultancy Distyl AI's valuation soars to $1.8B after bumper funding round - SiliconANGLE

Artificial intelligence startup Distyl AI Inc. is growing its reputation as an AI consultancy that delivers rapid, real results for enterprises after closing on a bumper $175 million funding round at a $1.8 billion unicorn valuation today.

The round was led by Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures and saw the participation of Coatue, Dell Technologies Capital and DST Global as well, bringing the startup’s total amount raised to just over $200 million.

Distyl AI’s round was first reported by The Information, which notes that the startup has helped major enterprises such as T-Mobile USA Inc. successfully implement a number of value-generating AI projects.

The company was founded in 2022 by Arjun Prakash and Derek Ho, who previously made their names at the data mining firm Palantir Technologies Inc. It has forged a growing reputation as the consultancy to call when enterprises realize that they’re not getting enough out of their endless AI pilots, and that it’s time to start showing results.

The founders say they’ve combined their years of experience in building complex data platforms at Palantir with a staff of talented AI engineers and researchers who earned their chops at companies like OpenAI and Apple Inc.

Distyl AI specializes in integrating AI directly into its customer’s core business processes, and says it’s capable of building AI systems that can start delivering millions of dollars in savings or revenue generation. Its efforts center on its Distillery AI Engine, which can be embedded into enterprise’s existing computing systems and applications and start automating various aspects of their work. It claims that these “AI Routines” can be gotten up and running in weeks rather than months or years.

With Distillery, AI algorithms create the automated processes by studying customer’s business operations and working out how they can be performed by AI agents instead of human workers. The engine taps into each customer’s proprietary data to ensure these agents possess the “organizational knowledge” needed to do this work.

It provides comprehensive observability too, so companies can track every single input and output and gain visibility into the AI’s decision-making processes. Each AI workflow it builds is carefully evaluated, both in terms of its performance and for its reliability and correctness. Guardrails are also implemented to prevent the AI models from going askew and “hallucinating.”

Chief Executive Prakash told The Information that the startup builds “outcome-driven partnerships” with its clients. The focus is on integrating AI in such a way that it can immediately begin automating workloads and solving their biggest business challenges, rather than having consultants sit in boardrooms for months on end just talking about how it might be done. It collaborates closely with OpenAI to adapt that company’s most advanced foundation models for real-world deployments.

The partnership with OpenAI has helped Distyl AI to land numerous clients in industries spanning telecommunications, insurance, retail, manufacturing and healthcare, the startup says. In one case study, it claims to have helped an unnamed hardware manufacturer increase the time it takes to perform a root cause analysis of supply chain disruptions by 80%. In another, it says it helped a healthcare payor to improve its analysts’ investigation times and deliver more than $23 million in annual savings.

Today’s round represents a massive jump that reflects the company’s rapid rise over the last year. In November, it raised $20 million in an investment that was also led by Lightspeed, having closed on a $7 million seed funding round in April 2023.

Clearly, Distyl AI’s backers believe it’s about to hit the big time, and they say they’re confident that it can help itself to a generous slice of the projected $300 billion market for enterprise AI, which is growing by about 20% each year. The startup’s advantage over traditional consultancies is that it helps enterprises implement AI more successfully, with smaller teams, and at lower costs. If that’s true, it’s a compelling proposition for organizations that are falling over themselves in the race to AI automation but often aren’t seeing measurable results.

Prakash said he already knows how he’s going to spend the money from today’s round, with plans to grow its team, refine the Distillery AI Engine and expand its strategic partnerships with AI developers.

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