In a bid to democratize AI development and make it accessible to companies of all sizes, Graft launched its AI development platform in beta last year. Today, the startup celebrates a significant milestone with a $10 million seed investment and an exciting step towards opening the platform to a larger audience of companies.
The brainchild of Graft’s co-founder and CEO, Adam Oliner, the idea for the company emerged while he was overseeing AI at Slack. Oliner recognizes the tremendous potential AI, particularly ChatGPT, holds for businesses. However, he emphasizes the distinction between experimenting with ChatGPT and creating a robust, production-ready AI application.
“The shiny AI toys available do not cater to production needs, and non-experts often find existing platforms cumbersome. Graft aims to bridge this gap by providing a modern, production-grade AI platform accessible to everyone,” explained Oliner to TechCrunch.
Indeed, while large language models like ChatGPT have simplified some aspects of AI development, the journey to creating a fully operational application remains challenging. The complexity of these models, their lack of transparency, and the emergence of new concerns regarding compliance, privacy, and AI ethics have added layers of intricacy.
User-Friendly Apps: Simplifying AI Adoption
In response to these challenges, Graft has introduced a series of user-friendly apps to facilitate customers quick entry into the AI space without the need for starting from scratch. These apps are templatized use cases, allowing users to easily instantiate them into fully functional production use cases with their data.
For instance, some of the current offerings include visual search and identifying customer champions. Graft strives to simplify the onboarding process—users can create a Graft account, choose from pre-defined templates, and seamlessly integrate their data. The company handles the infrastructure, making the application deployment process a breeze.
As Graft secures additional funding, it gears up to open its platform to more companies in a controlled manner. The vision is to make AI development an inclusive process, empowering businesses of all sizes to harness the potential of artificial intelligence effectively. With Graft’s dedication to creating a user-friendly, production-grade AI platform, the future of AI adoption in the business world looks promising.
