Every day in 2024 is filled with AI-related news. But JamixA brand new San Francisco-based AI startup founded by former Instagram and Airbnb engineers hopes to maintain distance by solving a really unique but widespread problem: enabling corporations to make use of generative AI assistants, without jeopardizing your data privacy and security.
Jamix reportedly offers a secure, model-agnostic AI assistant designed to extend workplace productivity.
Last week, it emerged from stealth with $3 million in pre-seed funding led by Audacious Ventures, with contributions from angel investors including Keith Peiris (CEO, Tome), Chris Prucha (Co-Founder, Notion & Origin), Oleg Rogynskyy (CEO, People.ai) and Nate Smith (Founder, Lever), Bobby Lo (Founder, Vurb), Zac Altman (Founder, LoungeBuddy), Neha Sampat (CEO, Contentstack), Nishant Patel (Founder and CTO, Contentstack).
“Most corporations don’t really have the resources to construct such a classy tool,” co-founder and CEO Matt Zitzmann said in an exclusive video call interview with VentureBeat last week. “That’s the gap we wish to fill on this market, to assist corporations have their very own custom, internal version of ChatGPT or an AI assistant that protects people’s data.”
Zitzmann and his co-founder Conglei Shi, who serves as Jamix's chief technology officer (CTO), are well-versed in enterprise software and have resumes with among the biggest names in tech: Zitzmann worked at Google, Instagram and parent company Meta, which acquired his former company Kamcord. Shi worked at IBM on the Watson AI team and later at Airbnb.
Increasing productivity within the workplace while maintaining safety
Jamix's philosophy is straightforward: “For AI to really reach its full potential, it must be connected to your data, your apps and your APIs,” Zitzmann told VentureBeat.
He identified that while corporations may try to make use of AI tools without disclosing their data, with the great intention of keeping it protected and secure, this limits the probabilities of AI to meaningfully improve and grow their business. significantly limited.
Zitzmann presented the hypothetical situation where an organization hires a human intern but doesn’t give him access to the corporate's corporate information.
“This intern isn't going to be very effective, is he?” Zitzmann asked rhetorically. “That’s mainly what AI is today.”
Instead, Jamix's approach is to enable its AI assistant to integrate with an organization's existing, commonly used workplace software apps like Google Workspace or Notion, in addition to messaging apps like Slack, and supply information back to the user when needed.
This allows Jamix to perform three broad categories of tasks for businesses:
The first is cross-app search: Instead of the user having to modify forwards and backwards for a chunk of data they’re in search of, the Jamix search bar returns results from all the various apps it’s connected to via API backends, be it an e- Mail application, Slack or Google Docs, allowing the user to see and access this information more quickly and simply. Jamix refers to those as “enterprise data sources.”
“For 20 years, there's been this concept of enterprise search, where you will have one search bar that's like Google for all your company data,” Zitzmann explained. “This solves the issue of 'I realize it's somewhere, but I don't know if it's in my Gmail, Slack, or a Google Doc'.”
The second option is “chatting with apps and data,” says Zitzmann. This takes the same old early use case of generative AI, where a PDF will be uploaded and a conversation will be held using an AI tool like ChatGPT to display or summarize specific information, but is expanded to incorporate any documents an organization provides to its employees wishes to have the opportunity to access.
As an example, Zitzmann said users can ask its AI assistant connected to a recruiting application, “How many candidates do we’ve within the engineering pipeline, what number of offers have we made, what number of have been rejected?” and get the answers , without having to look through the app itself to seek out it.
Finally, in arguably essentially the most ambitious a part of the offering, Jamix allows its AI assistant to “initiate actions” on behalf of the user in its workplace apps, essentially acting as an AI agent that files bug reports or evaluates incoming resumes for a particular job posting based on how well they meet the factors of the job commercial. Another function is combining information from URLs.
All of those features are aimed toward saving time and reducing manual effort in every day tasks.
Committed to user privacy and security
Nevertheless, Jamix stays committed to the privacy of its users by encrypting all of its customers' data and signing agreements with AI model providers, including OpenAI for ChatGPT and GPT-3.5/4, not to coach on Jamix user data.
In this manner, Jamix's AI Assistant goals to handle vital data security concerns when integrating AI into workflows.
“The contractual agreement that we’ve with these (AI model) providers stipulates that they are usually not allowed to coach based on this (customer) data,” Zitzmann said.
For customers who still place more value on closed model providers, Zitzmann identified that Jamix also works with open source AI models, allowing its enterprise customers to run the AI assistant in their very own private clouds or on-premises.
Jamix's commitment to model agnosticism enables the corporate to adapt to the rapid development of AI technology. This strategy allows corporations to leverage essentially the most effective and cost-efficient AI models without being limited to a single provider, making it easy to adapt to recent technologies.
Notable supporters
The $3 million in pre-seed funding led by Audacious Ventures with participation from several notable angel investors shows that Jamix's approach to AI within the workplace has strong industry support.
Zitzmann, co-founder and CEO, emphasized the importance of launching a product that will be deeply integrated into company operations while protecting data privacy and providing flexibility in the usage of AI models.
Nakul Mandan, founder and partner at Audacious Ventures, expressed his support for Jamix's mission to supply AI assistants that address the particular needs of companies while prioritizing data security and user permissions.
“We envision a future where AI assistants can be found to each knowledge employee on the planet, but these should be developed with business needs in mind,” Mandan said in an announcement to VentureBeat. “Jamix’s AI assistant helps users search and interact with the knowledge of their organizations and likewise automates tasks for them. They achieve all of this while taking data security and permissions into consideration.”
With its recent funding and product launch, Jamix goals to supply a brand new solution to the AI assistant marketplace for corporations seeking to increase their productivity while maintaining strict data security standards. The platform's deep integration with workplace tools and its model-agnostic approach underscore Jamix's commitment to providing flexible and secure AI solutions for businesses.
