- Convergence AI, a new UK startup, is in talks over a significant pre-seed funding round.
- The startup is building automated AI workforces, per a leaked investor deck seen by BI.
- VCs continue to pour funds into AI startups building agents and foundational models.
Convergence AI, a UK AI startup founded last month by former Cohere employees, is already in talks to raise a major pre-seed round amid venture capitalists' continued spending spree in the sector.
The startup, which was incorporated at the end of April, was founded by ex-Cohere employees Marvin Purtorab and Andy Toulis, who was also a machine-learning engineer at Uber. Its primary aim, per leaked investor documents seen by Business Insider, is to create automated workforces using AI.
The nascent company has been supported by several leading funds and has received at least six different term sheets for investment, two London sources said.
Convergence AI opted for a pre-seed funding round led by the London VC firm Balderton Capital, six sources familiar with the deal told BI.
The size of the round is not yet finalized because the deal is not closed. Convergence AI was originally looking to raise $10 million from investors, five sources said.
However, the deal could close on a larger number, with two sources saying that the startup could raise closer to $12 million.
Three London investors said the funding could give Convergence AI a valuation of about $50 million.
Sources spoke to BI on condition of anonymity, as details about the deal, which is not yet finalized and subject to change, are still private.
Balderton Capital declined to comment. Purtorab and Toulis, the company's founders, had not responded to a request for comment by the time the article went live.
The startup aims to build "agents" that can interact with each other on behalf of employees using pre-agreed levels of access to messaging platforms, such as Slack or email, according to a deck obtained by BI.
If employees are unavailable or offline, the deck said their digital twins could reply and perform actions on their behalf.
Over the past 18 months, there has been significant VC interest in teams touting alumni from AI juggernauts like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Nvidia. A litany of startups have emerged, armed with large sums of cash.
Startups developing foundational models and AI agents have caught investor attention since the launch of ChatGPT-3 in November 2022.
Notable examples include the French OpenAI rival Mistral, the Paris startup the Paris startup Holistic, the London startup 11x, and the AI voice-cloning startup ElevenLabs.
