Ikigai lands $25M investment to bring generative AI to tabular data

Businesses have an abundance of information at their disposal, yet they confront numerous difficulties when it comes to utilizing, structuring, and interpreting this data. Based on a projection, organizations are expected to store a staggering 100 zettabytes of data in the cloud by 2025. However, a mere 13% of companies are currently succeeding in implementing their analytics and data plan, as revealed by a study conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights and Databricks.

Devavrat Shah asserts that in order for companies to accurately predict and plan for various scenarios, it is essential to effectively utilize diverse and intricate data sets obtained from numerous sources within the organization. According to Shah, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in achieving this objective. Shah, who created Celect, an AI application used for distributing and processing large-scale retail orders, and currently oversees MIT's center for statistics and data science, has profound expertise in this field. Additionally, Nike acquired Celect in 2019.

"Presently, the utmost ambitious initiative for AI involves integrating it into organizations or enterprises," Shah explained in an email to TechCrunch. "Enterprises are managed by proficient individuals, and we are convinced that these experts must have the ability to effortlessly collaborate with AI in order to leverage its potential advantages."

In order to achieve the goal of "giving every business the power of AI," as mentioned by Shah, Shah established Ikigai Labs. This company provides a platform that does not require coding and is built upon unique graphical models for forecasting, sorting through limited data, and enhancing efficiency. Today, Ikigai has revealed that it successfully obtained $25 million in Series A funding, with Premji Invest taking the lead, while Foundation Capital and E& Capital VC also contributed. With this recent investment, Ikigai has now accumulated a total of $38.2 million.

Shah and Vinayak Ramesh joined forces to establish Ikigai together. Ramesh had already set up a healthcare company called Well Frame in the past, which was acquired by Blackstone in 2012. During their time at MIT as graduate students, Ramesh collaborated with Shah on developing artificial intelligence for tabular data. This type of data is structured in a table format, similar to a database, with rows and columns. They accomplished this by employing extensive graphical models.

In the realm of neural networks, graphical models depict the probabilistic connections between various variables, as Shah clarified. He further elaborated that enterprise data is primarily in the form of tables, with many empty spaces and usually associated with specific time stamps. In this particular scenario, large graphical models are an ideal fit. Using contemporary terminology, they are considered as 'generative AI' specifically designed for tabular data.

Ikigai's platform is designed to empower companies to develop and implement these visual models to support applications throughout their businesses. By utilizing this tool, clients can train models as needed using their corporate data, resulting in models that aid in predicting, planning scenarios, and conducting analysis.

You might wonder why Ikigai's visual representations are better than, for example, the extensive language models (LLMs) that have become popular in recent times. Shah explains that LLMs are effective for handling text and unorganized information, but they are also costly to maintain as they need a significant amount of storage space compared to their visual model counterparts.

"Our company offers fundamental components that empower clients to tackle a wide range of applications," stated Shah. "Our aim is to involve everyone in embracing the advancements of AI without being overwhelmed by it."

Shah is well aware that Ikigai faces tough competition in the vast enterprise AI market. He mentioned companies like C3.ai, Anaplan, Dataiku, and Hugging Face as major contenders, acknowledging that they provide similar functionalities to some extent.

However, according to Sandesh Patnam, who is a managing partner at Premji Invest, he firmly believes that Ikigai has the capability to distinguish itself from the masses.

According to an email statement, the group behind Ikigai has extensive knowledge and experience in the field, which can help advance AI in business operations and decision-making. Their groundbreaking work on elaborate graphic models will be highly appreciated by companies seeking to use generative AI on their current numerical data.

Ikigai, a company located in San Francisco, aims to expand its workforce from 30 individuals to 70 individuals by the conclusion of the year, thanks to the injection of additional capital.