BVC Leads $20M Seed for Contextual AI to Build “Artificial Specific Intelligence”

Bain Capital Ventures (BVC) led a $20 million seed round for Palo Alto-based Contextual AI, a startup developing enterprise-focused AI language models. Notable venture capital firms Lightspeed, Greycroft and SV Angel, along with a long list of angel investors also participated in the round.

Founded earlier this year, the company has a unique focus: Developing what its co-founders, CEO Douwe Kiela, and CTO, Amanpreet Singh, refer to in a blog post as “‘ASI’ — artificial specialized intelligence.”

Kiela and Singh have recent high-profile experience in the arena of AI and large language models (LLMs). Both previously worked at Meta Platforms’ FAIR on developing systems for detecting hate speech in memes and the sale of illicit goods on Facebook. At HuggingFace, a company with a popular platform for hosting AI models, they worked on LLMs.

“With 10+ years of experience as researchers in AI, natural language processing and machine learning, my cofounder Amanpreet and I are on a mission to take this powerful technology to the next step, where it can be used in real-world enterprise applications,” said Kiela.

BVC has also funded other AI startups, including Granica, which emerged from stealth on Friday, with a $45 million seed round. In April, BVC led a $5.4 million seed round for digital wallet infrastructure platform Ansa.