From TechCrunch
By Kyle Wiggers
June 22, 2024
OmniAI transforms business data for AI
The majority of companies struggle to extract value from their data. Several years ago, Forrester reported that between 60% and 73% of data belonging to the average business goes unused for analytics. That’s because the data’s siloed or otherwise pigeonholed by technical and security considerations, making it difficult — if not impossible — to apply analytical tools.
Anna Pojawis and Tyler Maran, engineers who previously did stints at Y Combinator-backed startups Hightouch (a data-syncing platform) and Fair Square (a health insurance tool), were inspired to try their hands at solving the data value problem after discovering that many companies had been “locked out” of analytics strategies due to the engineering roadblocks.
“We’ve found that a significant part of the market, especially those in regulated industries like healthcare and finance,” have struggled with data analytics, Maran told TechCrunch. “The majority of corporate data doesn’t fit into a database today; it’s sales calls, documents, Slack messages and so on. And, given the scale of these companies, off-the-shelf data models are typically not sufficient.”
So Pojawis and Maran founded OmniAI, a set of tools that transform unstructured enterprise data into something that data analytics apps and AI can understand.
OmniAI syncs with a company’s data storage services and databases (e.g., Snowflake, MongoDB, etc.), preps the data within and allows companies to run the model of their choice — for example, a large language model — on the data. OmniAI performs all of its work in the company’s cloud, OmniAI’s private cloud or on-premises environments, delivering ostensibly improved security, according to Maran.
“We believe that large language models will become essential to a company’s infrastructure in the next decade, and having everything hosted in one place just makes sense,” Maran said.
Out of the box, OmniAI offers integrations with models, including Meta’s Llama 3, Anthropic’s Claude, Mistral’s Mistral Large and Amazon’s AWS Titan for use cases like automatically redacting sensitive information from data and generally building AI-powered applications. Customers sign a software-as-a-service contract with OmniAI to enable management of models on their infrastructure.
Got Laid Off? Find Your Next Job At Disrupt.
Got Laid Off? Find Your Next Job At Disrupt.
It’s early days. But Omni, which recently closed a $3.2 million seed round led by FundersClub at a $30 million valuation, claims to have 10 customers already, including Klaviyo and Carrefour. Annual recurring revenue is on track to reach $1 million by 2025, Maran said.
“We’re an incredibly lean team in a fast-growing industry,” Maran said. “Our bet is that, over time, companies will opt for running models alongside their existing infrastructure, and model providers will focus more on licensing model weights to existing cloud providers.”
Top Posts
Lately’s new gamified app helps people arrive on time
A new app called Lately launched on the App Store a few weeks ago, targeting people with ADHD to help them arrive on time and rewarding them for doing so. The service is designed to help users manage their travel plans by notifying them when it’s time to leave for a trip, sending reminders 30 minutes, 10 minutes, and 5 minutes before departure. It also features Live Activities on iPhone and Apple Watch that display a countdown to leave. To encourage timely departures, Lately employs a point rew
Apr 26, 2025
The OpenAI mafia: 15 of the most notable startups founded by alumni
Move over, PayPal mafia: There’s a new tech mafia in Silicon Valley. As the startup behind ChatGPT, OpenAI is arguably the biggest AI player in town. Its meteoric rise to a $300 billion valuation has spurred many employees to leave the AI giant to create startups of their own. The hype around OpenAI is so high that some of these startups, like Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, have been able to raise billions of dollars without even launching a pro
Apr 26, 2025
Deel files countersuit against Rippling as rivalry escalates
In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling. To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) to misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. Deel is now slamming that lawsuit as part of a “campaign to try to i
Apr 25, 2025